I think the problem is not that, but that the people using geolocating ips do not understand that there is "accuracy" metadata associated with it. Or maybe maxmind (or whoever is using maxmind) are ignoring the accuracy for that specific location. To geolocate someone with just an ip, you should never expect it to be more than "country level" accurate.

I can def see detective Jonhson trying to find child pornographer X with a warrant to get their location based on an ip. The company doing the geolocation might or might not tell them: this is the gps coords, but with an error of a few thousand kms.

Now, if the Arnold's ever want to do something "bad", their situation could've been the perfect cover up :-)

> you should never expect it to be more than "country level" accurate.

Well if we're talking about safe expectations... there are no expectations. Pretty sure it'd not even get the planet right for browsers from the international space station, or the continent if your IP is newly registered (e.g. IPv6, but even for IPv4 this still happens).

Cities, in my experience, are often correct and are usually the closest you get.

I think the problem isn't that it's "invalid" but that the number returned should be an area and not a point - they have enough information to say the IP is located in the US. It's somewhat reasonable to return this as a center + a radius of certainty, saying, "It's somewhere in this circle" - I'm not sure if Maxmind returns a radius, but I wouldn't put it past the police to see a point in the center of a giant circle and say, "OK, let's go to that point" - not realizing the point of the circle.

In reality, it should probably return a shape file of some sort.