Kansas couple sues geolocation company for “digital hell”

Фото: Depositphotos

In 2011, James Arnold and his wife Teresa moved to the countryside in the state of Kansas with their two sons. They rented a house that is located close to the school their son goes to and the nursing home where Teresa’s mother lives.

Arnold hoped to enjoy peace in the house, which is about an hour from civilization, but their life, on the contrary, turned into a complete nightmare.

A week later, they were told by local police officers who were looking for a stolen truck. As it turned out, this was only the beginning of unforeseen visits to them by various services.

Last week, the couple filed a lawsuit against MaxMind, a company that provides IP mapping services (linking IP addresses to geographic coordinates on the basis of geolocation).

In their statement, the couple complains that they are regularly awakened at night or disturbed throughout the day by local or federal law enforcement officials for reasons ranging from searches for missing children to computer fraud or suicide attempts.

Among other things, James Arnold was accused of holding girls on the site for filming pornographic films. In addition, he and his wife were accused of hacker attacks on mail servers and other cybercrime. Once unknown people left on the road leading to their home, a broken toilet.

As it turned out, the cause of all ordeal was the cartographic program MaxMind, as well as the fact that the house rented by the Arnolds from 82-year-old Joyce Taylor Vogelman is located almost in the geographical center of the United States.

The fact is that MaxMind provides data on the location of IP addresses, but some addresses can only be determined with accuracy to a country or state, and therefore the system automatically locates them in the geographical center of a given region.

The exact GPS coordinates for the center of the United States are “39,8333333-98,585522,” but MaxMind decided to round them up to “38,0000-97,0000,” which coincided with the coordinates of the house where the Arnolds live.

In situations where the MaxMind system cannot, upon receiving a request, locate an IP address, it defaults to the US geographic center, that is, the address of the Arnold house.

The MaxMind services, headquartered in Massachusetts, are used by thousands of companies and services, among other things, to send advertising to geolocations, depending on the location of smartphones and computers.

The company claims that they could not assume that their digital map of the country could lead to similar consequences due to an error in cartographic coordinates.

The Arnold couple estimates the damage from MaxMind's actions at least $ 75 thousands. Family lawyer Randall Rathban believes that the process in this case will begin no earlier than a year later.

The lawsuit alleges that the company's actions violated their privacy rights and "misrepresented them," which in turn led to "psychological distress, fears for their safety and bullying."

Since April, 2016, when this story became known for the first time, MaxMind has made changes to its mapping system. The geographical center of the United States is now located in a nearby lake.

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