GeoIP Release Notes

You can now view a log of your MaxMind account activity, which includes a time stamp, requester, and subject, for the each of the following actions:

• Creation of a new user
• Deactivation of a user
• User password changes
• Email address / username changes

Account administrators can see activity across the whole account, while non-administrators will only see their own activity. You can find the account activity log in your account portal under ‘Account Information’ or here [login required].

The following outputs have been added to the GeoIP2 Insights web service, and minFraud Insights and Factors web services:

• network – The network in CIDR notation associated with the record. This is the largest network where all of the fields besides ip_address have the same value.
• user_count – The estimated number of users sharing the IP/network during the past 24 hours. For IPv4, the count is for the individual IP. For IPv6, the count is for the /64 network.

Both of these outputs are present in the traits object.

8-hour interruption of old TLS and unencrypted minFraud requests on September 25, 2019

There will be a planned service interruption for all requests to MaxMind services that use TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1, and for unencrypted HTTP requests to MaxMind legacy minFraud services (e.g. minFraud Standard, minFraud Premium, Proxy Detection web service, IIN service). This will take place for up to 8 hours from 14:00-22:00 UTC on September 25, 2019.

During the interruption, requests using TLS v1.0 and v1.1 and unencrypted HTTP requests to legacy minFraud endpoints will fail with an error.

To avoid service interruption, you may need to upgrade some part of your technology stack to a later version, or you may need to make code changes. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Additional info is available on our blog.

GeoIP2 web service customers can now access anonymous IP data through the GeoIP2 online lookup form [login required] in the account portal. Select the GeoIP2 Insights web service on the form when querying IP(s).

We have made improvements in how we detect business IPs for the user type field provided as part of the GeoIP2 Insights web service and minFraud services. Approximately 1% of residential IPs were recently corrected to the appropriate business user type as a result of these improvements.

8-hour interruption of old TLS and unencrypted minFraud requests on August 28, 2019

There will be a planned service interruption for all requests to MaxMind services that use TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1, and for unencrypted HTTP requests to MaxMind legacy minFraud services (e.g. minFraud Standard, minFraud Premium, Proxy Detection web service, IIN service). This will take place for up to 8 hours from 14:00-22:00 UTC on August 28, 2019.

During the interruption, requests using TLS v1.0 and v1.1 and unencrypted HTTP requests to legacy minFraud endpoints will fail with an error.

To avoid service interruption, you may need to upgrade some part of your technology stack to a later version, or you may need to make code changes. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Additional info is available on our blog.

We now update the GeoIP2 ISP and GeoIP2 Connection Type databases weekly (previously they were updated twice a month and once a month respectively). Update your download frequency if you use these databases to ensure you have the most up-to-date files.

There will be a planned service interruption for all requests to MaxMind services that use TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1, and for unencrypted HTTP requests to MaxMind legacy minFraud services (e.g. minFraud Standard, minFraud Premium, Proxy Detection web service, IIN service). This will take place for up to 2 hours starting at 14:00 UTC on the three dates below:

• Monday, July 29, 2019
• Wednesday, July 31, 2019
• Friday, August 2, 2019

During the interruption, requests using TLS v1.0 and v1.1 and unencrypted HTTP requests to legacy minFraud endpoints will fail with an error.

To avoid service interruption, you may need to upgrade some part of your technology stack to a later version, or you may need to make code changes. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Additional info is available on our blog.

We are adding postal code data for Singapore and South Korea. Effective July 22nd 2019, we will return the first 2 digits of Singapore postal codes and 5-digit South Korea postal codes where we have reasonable confidence in postal resolution.

We’ve updated the direct download URLs for GeoIP databases in your account portal to use security tokens instead of license keys. If you are a new user and wish to use your own script or program to automate GeoIP downloads instead of using our GeoIP Update Program, there are additional steps to take after copying the direct download URL from your account portal.

If you are an existing user that has already set up your own script or program to automate GeoIP downloads, this change should not affect you, unless you add new databases to your script or program. Instructions on additional steps are here.

In order to ensure your data is as safe and secure as possible, we will be retiring support for TLS v1.0 and 1.1, unencrypted HTTP requests to our legacy minFraud services, and our legacy minFraud SOAP API in the coming months. Please see our blog for more info.

To enhance the security of your MaxMind account, Chrome users can enable two-factor authentication (2FA). You can now add and require a (FIDO U2F) security key on top of your account credentials for a more secure log-in. See our support center user guide for information on how to set up 2FA.

We completed our most recent review and update of Geolocation for Crimea. Our accuracy has increased as follows: Approximately 93% of website visitors who are from Crimea are currently located by GeoIP as being in Crimea. Approximately 99% of the visitors who are located in Crimea by GeoIP are actually in Crimea.

We currently locate Crimea in Ukraine, as we use GeoNames data and they locate Crimea in Ukraine. If GeoNames locates Crimea in Russia in the future, we will follow their change and post an announcement here as well as on https://twitter.com/maxmind.

In legacy GeoIP, we return a FIPS region code of 11 or 20. In GeoIP2, we return an ISO code of 40 or 43 in the subdivision object.

Due to the nature of geolocation technology and other factors beyond our control, we cannot guarantee any specific future accuracy level. Further, accuracy figures are subject to change as IP networks are reallocated.

We have added Ruby as a MaxMind Supported GeoIP2 API (RubyGems, GitHub). It provides a Ruby reader for the MaxMind DB Database Format (used by the GeoIP2 databases and our free GeoLite2 databases).

We’ve released a new major version of GeoIP Update. This release adds support for Windows and has a new code base. You can find it on GitHub. See our documentation if you’re running an older version.

In order to address new legal requirements, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we will be limiting availability of archived GeoIP databases to 30 days. This change will be effective March 18, 2019 and applies to all GeoIP2, GeoIP, and GeoLite2 databases. You may need to change your processes or applications to download more recent databases once this change occurs.

On Monday, January 7, 2019 at approximately 15:00 UTC (10:00am EST), we will be switching to static server IP addresses for traffic to our website and to downloads.maxmind.com (used for GeoIP database downloads). The IP for the hostname used by our web services or geoipupdate tool won’t change immediately, but if you whitelist IPs for any of our services we encourage you to add the new IP addresses to your whitelist. The static IP addresses will be a subset of what we list on our MaxMind server IP addresses page. We will update the list of IP addresses on that page following the change. Please sign up for the email list on that page if you want a notification when our server IP addresses change.

We have added web service lookup support to our GeoIP2 Node.js API (NPM, GitHub).

We have added Node.js as a MaxMind Supported GeoIP2 API (NPM, GitHub). It provides an API for the GeoIP2 databases, and will provide an API for the GeoIP2 web services. This API also works with MaxMind’s free GeoLite2 databases.

On Monday, October 1st, we will be changing a large amount of our U.S. coordinate (latitude & longitude) data* to use GeoNames coordinates for postal codes. This change will ensure greater consistency during our build processes. Around 95% of US coordinates will change with most moving about 1 mile. About 5 to 10% of US coordinates will move by more than 10 miles.

* Coordinate data is approximate and is not precise. It should not be used to identify a particular street address or household as it refers to a larger geographical area instead of a precise location.

Effective August 21st, we will be mapping IP addresses to Districts (Gu) of Seoul instead of Seoul. This will allow customers to have a more precise mapping, similar to how we map IPs to New York City and London boroughs, and Tokyo’s special wards. We will continue to map some IPs to Seoul if we are unable to determine the specific district the IP is located in. We will also continue to map IPs located in the central Jung District to Seoul, similar to how we map IPs in Manhattan to New York and IPs in Chūō to Tokyo.

Effective July 24th, we will be mapping more IP addresses to special wards of Tokyo instead of Tokyo itself. This will allow customers to have a more precise mapping, similar to how we map IPs to New York City and London boroughs. We will continue to map some IPs to Tokyo if we are unable to determine the specific special ward the IP is located in.

Effective July 10th, we will update the ISP and Organization data to replace the Time Warner Cable name with the name Spectrum, as these two ISPs have merged and Time Warner Cable has been rebranded as Spectrum.

Effective May 29, 2018, we will be adding Åland Islands, Martinique, Mayotte, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Réunion, and Saint Martin to the list of European Union locations identified by the GeoIP2 Country, GeoIP2 City, and GeoIP2 Enterprise databases and GeoIP2 web services responses.

We have decided to discontinue the GeoLite Legacy databases on January 2, 2019. As part of that process, updated versions of the GeoLite Legacy databases are now only available to redistribution license customers, although anyone can continue to download the March 2018 GeoLite Legacy builds. Starting January 2, 2019, the last build will be removed from our website. GeoLite Legacy database users will need to switch to the GeoLite2 or commercial GeoIP databases and update their integrations by January 2, 2019. Correspondingly, we have decided against removing latitude and longitude coordinates from the GeoLite2 databases. We are in the process of reviewing coordinates used in all of our GeoLite2 and GeoIP databases to ensure there is no risk of misuse.

We have added additional outputs to the GeoIP2 Country, GeoIP2 City, and GeoIP2 Enterprise databases and to the GeoIP2 web services. The outputs are:

• EU Country: /country/is_in_european_union – Country of the location of the IP address in an EU member state
• EU Registered Country: /registered_country/is_in_european_union – Country registered by the ISP or organization is an EU member state

GeoIP2 Country, GeoIP2 City, and GeoIP2 Enterprise CSV databases will have a new column added to the location files named “is_in_european_union”. This will be “1” if the country is in the European Union and “0” otherwise.

GeoIP2 Insights now includes anonymizer-type outputs. These outputs are:

• /traits/is_anonymous – whether the IP address belongs to any sort of anonymous network.
• /traits/is_anonymous_vpn – whether the IP address belongs to an anonymous VPN system.
• /traits/is_hosting_provider – whether the IP address belongs to a hosting provider.
• /traits/is_public_proxy – whether the IP address belongs to a public proxy.
• /traits/is_tor_exit_node – whether the IP address is a Tor exit node.

Please see our GeoIP2 Web Services documentation for more information.

We have discontinued the legacy GeoIP JavaScript services, which used the endpoints http://js.maxmind.com/js/country.js and http://js.maxmind.com/js/geoip.js. If you still have not upgraded your integration to use the GeoIP2 JavaScript Client API or are encountering problems with your legacy GeoIP JavaScript services, you can find more information about what to do in our developer documentation.

Our Singapore server is now live. GeoIP2 and GeoIP web service customers – if you hardcode any of our IPs in your application or your firewall, please make sure you have added the new server IP addresses to your list:

• IPv4 address: 169.55.62.55
• IPv6 address: 2607:f0d0:3:2d::4
• hostname: geoip-as-southeast.maxmind.com

We completed our most recent review and update of Geolocation for Crimea. Our accuracy has increased as follows:

Approximately 89% of website visitors who are from Crimea are currently located by GeoIP as being in Crimea. Approximately 97% of the visitors who are located in Crimea by GeoIP are actually in Crimea.

We currently locate Crimea in Ukraine, as we use GeoNames data and they locate Crimea in Ukraine. If GeoNames locates Crimea in Russia in the future, we will follow their change and post an announcement here as well as on https://twitter.com/maxmind.

In legacy GeoIP, we return a FIPS region code of 11 or 20. In GeoIP2, we return an ISO code of 40 or 43 in the subdivision object.

Due to the nature of geolocation technology and other factors beyond our control, we cannot guarantee any specific future accuracy level. Further, accuracy figures are subject to change as IP networks are reallocated.

On October 31, 2017, we will discontinue our legacy GeoIP JavaScript services, which use the endpoints http://js.maxmind.com/js/country.js and http://js.maxmind.com/js/geoip.js. Please upgrade your legacy GeoIP integration to use our GeoIP2 JavaScript Client API before that date.

We will be mapping additional mobile (cellular) networks to a region (subdivision) rather than city level. This change will only occur where the confidence in the city data is low due to the mobile provider allocating IPs over a wide area.

The geographical location for anycast CloudFlare networks: 104.16.0.0/12, 162.159.0.0/16, 190.93.244.0/22, 198.41.192.0/19 have been removed.

Our Account Portal has been updated to include the ability for our customers to create and manage multiple license keys.

We are removing the geographical location for the anycast CloudFlare network 141.101.112.0/20. Anycast networks can be routed to a number of different locations all around the world, typically based on what is the nearest location. Over the next few weeks, we may remove the geographical location for additional anycast networks, including more CloudFlare networks as well as Google public DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

Our GeoLite2 ASN database is now provided in a CSV format suitable for importing into a SQL database as well as a GeoLite2 ASN database in our MaxMind DB binary format. You can download the database here. GeoLite2 databases may also be downloaded and updated with our GeoIP Update program.

We’ve updated the ISP and Organization data to replace the Charter Communications and Bright House Networks data points with the data point Spectrum, as these two ISPs have merged and been rebranded as Spectrum.

The GeoIP databases and services providing ISP and Organization data have been updated. The change is to a number of European and Latin Americans ISPs. We’ve updated the ISP name to use the common trade name instead of the legal name. This will make it easier to recognize the ISP.

Please note that if you use this data point, for example, to flag a visitor if they change ISP, you may need to adjust your implementation in order to avoid false positive flags.

The ISP name changes include the following:

• Proximus Skynet to Skynet Belgium
• Telefonica Germany to O2 Deutschland
• Telefonica Movil De Chile S.A. to Movistar Movil Chile
• Tele Danmark to TDC Danmark

We’ve updated any GeoIP database or service providing ISP and Organization data to return Comcast Business rather than Comcast Business Communications. We are doing so in order to use the trade name of the ISP and also because it is shorter.

Please note that if you use this data point, for example, to flag a visitor if they change ISP, you may need to adjust your implementation in order to avoid false positive or negative flags.

The following GeoIP databases and services are affected by this change:

• GeoIP2 ISP database
• GeoIP2 Enterprise database (Update will apply to November 15th release)
• GeoIP Legacy ISP and Organization databases
• GeoIP2 City Plus and Legacy City Web Service
• GeoIP2 and Legacy Insights Web Service

The GeoIP City databases now provide significantly improved accuracy for countries outside the US, especially China, India, and Japan. See more information about GeoIP accuracy on https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-accuracy-comparison