Couple Sues After I.P. Mapping company Assigns 600-Million Addresses To Their Home

Have you ever searched yourself online?  Digital mapping engines are a modern marvel - allowing you the opportunity to find out information on just about everyone and everyplace in the world.  But what happens if there's an error and the web starts to give out false information about you?

A couple in Kansas have lived that nightmare for the last 12 years - and didn't know why until recently.

It turns out that when I.P. searches come up without a match, companies often "assign" close geographical matches to advance their software.  For the lest ten years or so, MaxMind - the search company involved in this case - was assigning a location to their unmatched I.P.s;  the location they randomly chose turned out to be someone's real home and before the error was fixed, more than 600-million I.P.'s had been assigned out to this location.

Needless to say the family wasn't amused as law enforcement and investigators started tracking down would-be criminals to their house.  The Kansas couple was being wrongly blamed for everything from spam scams to kidnapping.  Now they're suing for damages.