IP Address - State of origin?

[treyball3]

Is it possible to find the state that an IP Address is from? I read that its not always true that you can find it, although I've seen some sites that can tell me what city I'm in even. I will be selling some items on my website and will need to charge sales tax if the buyer is located in my state. This is fine if they fill in their address correct. But, I will be selling stuff that is deliverable over the internet, so I don't need a shipping address, so theoretically a buyer could put in a false state just to avoid paying sales tax. So, if I could trace what state he/she is in, I would know to charge sales tax or not. Is this possible??? Also, is this a good/bad idea, why or why not? Thanks in advance for any ideas!!

 

[pgferro]

Webtrends has a feature that shows the state of origin, but it's far from reliable, mostly beacause of AOL that routes all its traffic through Virginia, so Virginia is always No 1 as state of origin... Also some big companies route their traffic through a central proxy/firewall, regardless of the geographic position of the user.

Hope it helps.

PG

 

[DreXor]

zip code would work decently, although you could fub a zip code, but if this is done before early checkout phases ( hehehee could even offer "WIN THIS" on the website with zipcode/count to flag it, encouraging zip entry )

other than honesty on the user's behalf there's not much that can be done...

one option is a little in depth ... but if you use CC authorization you could possibly retrieve the billing state, then confirm sale after adding sales tax and/or just add a level of fraud prevention to your checkout with the billing address and validate against CC company, that way you have a valid address, and CC user