TECHNICAL BRIEFING // REF-004•April 05, 2024•7 min read
IP Address Geolocation: Fact vs. Forensic Fiction
Explaining why an IP address is rarely a "physical address" and how prosecution experts often overstate location accuracy.
Prosecutors love to map an IP address to a physical home. But an IP address is a logical identifier, not a physical one.
In this briefing, we deconstruct the variables that lead to geolocation error:
1. VPN and Proxy Routing: The device appears to be in Chicago while the user is in London.
2. Dynamic IP Allocation: The IP assigned to a suspect at 2:00 PM may belong to a neighbor at 2:15 PM.
3. Carrier-Grade NAT: Thousands of users sharing a single public IP.
Unless the IP address is verified against internal ISP logs and correlated with local Wi-Fi artifacts, it is rarely enough to prove physical presence.