identify visitor's country

I'd like to also another point to the argument. websites which make no
attempt to tell where you're from and let you use their site, even if you
couldn't possibly do anything with it are offensive to me. For example:

let's say I want to buy something, so I find a shop that sells what i want.
I realise that they are accepting dollars and not pounds, which is fair
enough. However, I only find out they won't ship to me when they request a
zip-code and go on to tell me I don't exist. IMO websites that only cater
for one group of people (ie: americans) should clearly state on their front
page that the site is for use of those people only.

Phil

"John Dunlop" <usenet+2004@john.dunlop.name> wrote in message
news:MPG.1c1826b9e72d44859897d2@News.Individual.NE T...
> Chris Hope wrote:
>
>> You can generally get the country from the user's IP address pretty
>> successfully.
>
> I do not dispute that. I'm not a statistician. The service
> you suggested, IP-to-Country.com, claim to be about 98 %
> accurate.
>
> But do you agree that automatically guessing what country a
> reader is in is not infallible? That is what I was trying
> to get at. Is the risk of getting it wrong not enough for
> you to change your approach?
>
>> However, the databases are sometimes wrong or incomplete,
>> and the user may be going through a proxy in another country which
>> effectively masks them and makes out like they're in a country they are
>> not.
>
> When you're right, you're right, Chris!
>
> --
> Jock

Chris Hope wrote:

> It all depends to what purpose you are trying to determine their
> country.

I agree. Gosh, we could say: when you write, you're right!

> I currently only use ip-to-country for reporting purposes to
> get some idea of where in the world visitors to my sites are coming
> from. I may use it in the future to automatically select which country
> is preselected in a drop down box or which currency to use, but then
> again I may not.

Sounds reasonable, given that the information is for you
yourself. Consequently, other people cannot come to any
harm or even be inconvenienced.

Abracad, however, said he would like to serve different
pages to different countries. What did he mean? If he
meant a different default selection of a SELECT, as in your
example, fine; but, in my book, serving essentially
different resources, depending on a condition which you
might guess wrongly, is unjustifiable.

Some of the 'you's in my previous article referred to an
unspecified being, not you in particular, Chris. Sorry, I
should have made that clearer.

HAGW! when it comes.

--
Jock