What's the best free geo location method?

[fretfull]

Now that we are a few months into GDPR, I know that many people chose to block off Europe through geo location. I was wondering what free geo location methods people would suggest based on their experience?

[keyplyr]

I know that many people chose to block off Europe through geo location.

I see a lot of people boasting that they will, but I don't know anyone who actually does this. Seems like a pretty poor attempt at avoiding privacy compliance.

Since you "know that many people" what are these people using?

[not2easy]

I thought that GDPR/AdSense concerns were taken care of in the AdSense interface. Why block traffic from Europe?

[Dimitri]

What's the best free geo location method?

It depends what you can use.
- I think I read that Cloudflare can block visitors depending of their country,
- If you are a using a CMS, there might be an option too or a plug-in (evil)
- If you do your sites yourself, you can have a look at Maxmind free GeoIP API (PHP), or similar site like IP2Location which also has a free API / PHP
- As for Maxmind, there was a module for apache at a time, I don't know if it still exists,

I don't know anyone who actually does this

The New York Daily News,
Chicago Tribune,
LA Times,
Orlando Sentinel
Baltimore Sun
etc...

I thought that GDPR/AdSense concerns were taken care of in the AdSense interface. Why block traffic from Europe?

Because it's still unclear if the cookie that Adsense is dropping, even when personalized ads are disabled for the EU, is fully compliant with the GDPR or the ePrivacy Directive. Adsense is evasive about the subject, and since both publishers and adsense are liable, this is not surprising that some prefer not to take risks. Also, it's not only a matter of Adsense, the GDPR involes any kind of data collection, so some companies, even if they do not run adsense may not be compliant, or unable to be compliant.

[IanTurner]

Personally I use the IP2Location DB - its not perfect but is pretty accurate and when you find something amiss you can amend it.

I have seen numerous sites where I have been blocked from the content for being in the UK. Personally I'd encourage more people to block visitors from Europe rather than go through the rigmarole of becoming GDPR compliant.

[Dhillon]

1. Nginx geoip module.
2. Cloudflare's IP Geolocation

It should be easy to block or show notice with simple if/else code using one of the above service.

[Runfun]

Why block visitors from the EU? I'm from the EU and I use a popup with settings for my visitors but don't worry if your website isn't that big. First websites that could be warned or fined are the large websites, not the small websites and not even the small websites outside the EU.

[topr8]

Personally I use the IP2Location DB

I use the same product. and i like it!

although the OP asked for free and this isn't - it is $49 a year for the basic ip 2 country db.

... there are other threads here on the topic which i strongly agree with which basically say that this is just the beginning, everyone else is going to follow, so blocking europe is a short term solution as other areas are going to introduce similar laws anyway ... so my advice isn't to block europe but to work out a way to be compliant in your warnings and to have a robust privacy policy that explains clearly your use of cookies and so forth.... i imagine most users don't care anyway so will click i accept anyway ... you can always specifically block those that don't if you want.