Website & Mobile App (iOS & Android) location information - GeoIP

Downdetector uses GeoIP data from MaxMind to infer latitude and longitude coordinates for each problem report based on the IP address of the user who generated the report. When available, information about the user’s region, including country and city, is also provided. Geolocation details are associated with each problem report, and this information is used by the incident detection system and included in data presented to Downdetector Enterprise subscribers in the Dashboard and API.

Mobile Browser location information - GPS

Downdetector uses GPS based location data when a user reports an issue via their mobile browser, where the user has approved to share their location. Users will get a pop-up message asking to allow for their location details.

When approved, the location information will be GPS based. If not, MaxMind will be the source to identify/map the GeoIP information details.

Which data sources contribute to the reports location information?

We strive to get location information from Indicators & our proprietary methodology (Others). However, we don’t get any location information from tweets.

Report Attribution

By design, each Downdetector website is associated with a specific country. Similarly, every problem report is associated with a Downdetector website — though not necessarily the one through which the problem report was made.

If a user visits the website associated with the same country from where they make the report, the report is associated with that website. However, if the user’s geolocated country does not match the website’s country, the system determines whether that service is monitored on the site associated with the user’s geolocated country. If it is the same, then the report is attributed to the service for the matching country. If that service is not monitored for that country, the information is collected and stored, but it does not get attributed as a report against the service anywhere and will not be used by the incident detection system or included in data presented to Downdetector Enterprise subscribers in the Dashboard and API.

For example, consider the case when a user in Japan visits the U.S. Downdetector website and submits an indicator problem report for WebCo. If WebCo is also monitored in Japan, then that problem report will be attributed to the Japan Downdetector website. If WebCo is not monitored in Japan, the information will be collected and stored, but not treated as a problem report. Accordingly, that information will not be used by the incident detection system or included in data presented to Downdetector Enterprise subscribers in the Dashboard and API.

Tweet Attribution

Each Downdetector website is associated with a primary local language. Because Twitter does not reliably provide the user’s location, each Tweet is attributed to the website and country associated with the language of the Tweet. This does mean that some Tweets can be associated with multiple countries for a company that is monitored globally.