It is potentially one more datum, one more opportunity to dig out information you may wish to stay private. It worries some people, it doesn't worry others.

In reply to a post by john2007:

It is potentially one more datum, one more opportunity to dig out information you may wish to stay private. It worries some people, it doesn't worry others.

Indeed, I tend to consider myself as not being that interesting so it doesn't bother me particularly, your mileage may vary.

Exactly. My ping times vary from one day to the next. Double, half, double again, quadruple despite taking the same route through the network (and using fast path). I doubt that's a unique case and would render this system of geolocation pretty useless.

In reply to a post by john2007:

When you can reliably identify my location by tin-foil resonance I'll start worrying!

Each batch is marked by a unique combination of trace elements and logged on a central database. A bit like Smartwater.

In reply to a post by Btcc22:

Exactly. My ping times vary from one day to the next. Double, half, double again, quadruple despite taking the same route through the network (and using fast path). I doubt that's a unique case and would render this system of geolocation pretty useless.

add to that the varying routing involved. eg. someone further away from london than me can have better pings to london simply because their routing is more direct. Take these examples of my last few isp's. to bbc.co.uk.

BTw on fast path, varied from about 17ms up to about 30ms.
ukonline llu fast path, usually 9-10ms occasionally would increase a bit by a few ms.
xilo fast path, over 20ms.
VM cable, has been as low as 11ms, but they have a habit of routing me via leeds which bumps it to 16-17ms.

I'm puzzled by this whole discussion.

I read the linked article early on, and homed in on two things it says.

These organisations often host their websites on servers kept on their premises, meaning the servers' IP addresses are tied to their physical location.

... a common geolocation technique that narrows the target's possible location to a radius of around 200 kilometres.

Wang and colleagues then send data packets to the known Google Maps landmark servers in this large area to find which routers they pass through.

To me the first quote means they are only trying to locate website hosting machines, and re the second I can't find out what a Google Maps Landmark Server is as googling it gives pages of links to the article and I got bored.

I doubt if the assumption in the first quote is true in this country except in a very few cases, and the rest of us are pretty immune anyway as has been well covered.