[KLUG Advocacy] Freaky / Interesting experience with yahoo maps

[Mark Jones]

Two thoughts.  First, yahoo and all of the map sites, store your
previous searches and addresses by default. You can turn it off but one
must actively do so.  Yahoo will also tie into any information from
logins they might have.  Being logged into Yahoo Messenger is
sufficient.  It's a "feature";  My sister uses it all of the time.  It's
one of the reasons she prefers Yahoo Maps.

If you haven't given them any information, then it just might be
coincidental that you are in the center of your zip code.  This may not
necessarily be the geographical center.  It could be the population
center.  I've noticed that Mapquest and my Garmin GPS are now using pop
centers.  This has a high probability if it was "close" but not exactly
your address. 

As a very weird third possibility, the could have guessed based on your
IP address.  You can use one of the new trace route programs with
geographic information to lookup your own IP address.

Just thoughts,
Mark

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 14:35 -0500, greenproc wrote:
> When looking up directions to a location within downtown kalamazoo, I
> specified the street and zip of the location along with just the zip for
>  my "from" location at <maps.yahoo.com>.
> 
> The oddity is that the map and route resulting from my query was uncanny
> in it's pointing out where my "start address" was from -- almost the
> *exact* location, even though the only information provided was the zip
> -- I just wanted a map of the general area of the location but it was
> convenient to use the "directions" function of their site.
> 
> Can anyone else try the same thing, and discover if the route provided
> is suspiciously close to your actual location?
> 
> Is this a fluke or a flaw?
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