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Many applications for geolocation data

By The Associated Press

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Some uses of geolocation technology:

Fraud detection. PayPal uses geolocation to spot whether someone may be trying to transfer money from a new location. In such cases, the online payment service may request more authentication.

Market research. Seattle-based Loudeye, which uses technology to interfere with file-sharing networks, also analyzes music-download attempts to gauge where certain songs may be popular. Then music labels can direct marketing dollars there.

Country tracking. RealNetworks helps the Taiwanese government pinpoint from what countries people are accessing the audio and video content on its Web site.

E-mail location. DidTheyReadIt, an e-mail service that lets senders determine whether and for how long a recipient has opened a message, also offers information on where the message was opened.

Phishing detection. Digital Envoy, a major developer of geolocation, has adapted the technology to fight e-mail "phishing" scams. The e-mail header is analyzed to determine what countries the message has bounced through.

Digital rights. Sports leagues and movie distributors limit access to respect licensing rights.

Personalization. E4X has technology to automatically customize e-commerce sites with local currencies. Google and others redirect visitors so that someone in Geneva automatically gets the Swiss home page.

Network efficiency. Akamai Technologies attempts to reduce network congestion by steering visitors to the closest servers "mirroring" the original content. Akamai licenses this technology to others.
 
Ad targeting. Many Web sites target banner ads, at minimum by country. Google lets merchants target ads to a city or distance from a given address. ESPN.com has used the Internet address to segment the .edu college audience.

Seattle Times technology reporter Monica Soto contributed material to this story.