Tell HN: If you're asked to implement geofencing, push back
In the name of modernity, the city has removed ticket booths. Cutting down on real estate and human labor, yadda yadda. You pay the bus with an app. Okay, I'll download the app. Uh oh. My google play region is set somewhere in Europe, but I'm currently visiting the USA. The app developers decided to restrict the app to people living in the USA. What do I do?
I know, maybe I can pay through the website! Maybe the stupid idea that everything needs to be an app isn't completely pervasive yet. Hooray! There's a link to buy a ticket online. Wait, the website's giving me a weird 403 error... Not even a nice one, it's just a raw XML response. What did I ever do to them to ban me like that? Oh right. I'm using my phone to browse the website. My phone is connected to the internet via roaming through my home country's operator. All the traffic gets tunneled back there. So the whole internet thinks I'm still back home, even though I'm physically in the USA. The WAF detects that and decides that I'm not worthy to buy a ticket. So I can't buy a ticket on the website either.
This is a true story. It does have a happy ending: when I understood what happened, I logged into my VPN to get a shiny public-facing all-American God-fearing IP address. It's not an isolated case, however. So far this has only happened while I travelled in the USA, but it has happened numerous times over the past year. I've been blocked from buying bus tickets, paying for my parking spot, several store franchises' websites to check inventory is nearby locations... I've even been prevented from reading a restaurant menu! Not once, but twice: apparently Toast is a popular vendor for restaurant online operations, and that company implemented geofencing.
If you're in a software development role, and you're asked to implement geofencing, tell your manager that you simply cannot do it with any kind of accuracy. It's going to lose your company customers! I have an IT background; I understood what happened, and I have a VPN subscription / know that I need to connect to a public wifi somewhere. I'm not sure everyone will figure it out. And for what benefits, exactly? Why does the bus app need to be geofenced? It's not like I'll take the bus when I'm in a different country!
Do your part to keep the internet open, please.