Geolocation refers to identifying the real-world geographic location of an Internet connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other. Geolocation can be used to refer to the practice of assessing the location, or it can be used to refer to the actual assessed location or locational data. Geolocation can be performed by associating a geographic location with: the Internet Protocol address, MAC address, RFID, hardware embedded article/production number, embedded software number (such as UUID, Exif/IPTC/XMP or modern steganography), invoice, Wi-Fi connection location, or device GPS coordinates, or other, perhaps self-disclosed, information.
Geolocation generally works by automatically looking up an IP on a WHOIS service and retrieving the registrant's address.
The term is also used in other contexts to refer to the process of inferring the location of a tracked animal based, for instance, on the time history of sunlight brightness or the water temperature and depth measured by an instrument attached to the animal. Such instruments are commonly called Archival Tags or dataloggers.
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