Computer savvy people, help me

It's Obama's fault

This is an easy one.  So IP addresses are owned by ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers). Companies and ISP's fill out forms to request IP addresses from ARIN and are assigned in blocks of 256 IP's.  On the forms you have to put your company name, city state, etc...  The ARIN database is publicly accessible and used by people to determine "roughly" where you are located, but it's highly inaccurate because it's based on the information entered on the form often years ago when the IP's were assigned.  The company is supposed to keep it up to date, but that rarely happens.

Here's an example of a site that mines the data to determine your location:
http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/

An example of where it can be misleading:  I built a global network for a large telemarketing company.  I got a block of 1024 addresses from ARIN and did one generic entry listed in omaha, NE but I used the IP's at datacenters in Omaha, San Antonio, Manila, Australia, England, and Atlanta.  Anyone at any of their global locations all showed up as coming from Omaha, NE even though they were not physically located in Omaha.

I could get into more depth on how it all works if you want, but in a nutshell it's a non issue and you could connect to your home wifi and show up as MN, and connect to Wifi at starbucks a half a block from your house and show up as Seattle.

I believe that Yahoo mail sets that location stuff based upon a setting in your preferences.  I think that you tell it where you live, and it gives you info and stuff relative to that location.

At least that's how it used to be a few years back when I shared a 'Contact Us' type address with someone in St Louis.  When logged in, I always got news stories and stuff relative to his location, and one time I updated the preferences and he asked me why he was suddenly getting junk for Cleveland.