Checking through my referer logs this morning I came across a lot of hotlink requests for the thumbnail image of my Kimber Ultra CDP II:

I found it somewhat amusing that the hotlinks were coming from this thread on the Dyestat forums concerning a member who was contesting being banned for posting porn.  It turns out that he posted a link to a cute little kitten from a site that hates hotlinking far more than me.  Instead of just adding a watermark this site replaces the hotlinked picture with a nasty bit of porn.  One of the posters on the thread hotlinked my picture to prove the point that just because you see the original OK that it may be different when someone else views the hotlinked image (due to browser caching).

I made the mistake of clicking the link to the cute kitten, which was posted to show the *original* photo, but it appears that it’s been permanently replaced with a photo that will scar my brain for many months to come (although it’s not as bad as goatse.cx).  Still, though, my brain managed to register an “interesting” advertisement at the bottom of the page.  It listed some very adult personal ads from women supposedly in Keller, Roanoke, Hurst, and North Richland Hills and it referenced my zip code. 

I was a bit curious as to how they knew the zip code, as I didn’t think I’d done anything where my zip code would end up on an ad server’s cookie.  In the past I’d heard of geolocation services that could locate you based on your IP.  In fact, I recently added the EE IP to Nation module for comments.  However, that module only attempts to determine the nation for an IP.  From the last time I’d really looked at these services I didn’t recall them being exact enough to get to the zip code level.  It turns out that the latest services, such as IP2Location, can do a pretty good job of determining your general location:

Of course it always seems like the porn industry is the first to take advantage of and drive new web technologies.  In a previous post I noted AT&T’s cheesy and annoying system for location verification with their CallVantage VoIP service.  Perhaps AT&T should consider hiring some people from the porn industry to make the process more painless.