Looking back at 2020 with IPinfo

Goodbye, 2020! Our seventh year was filled with challenge and change -- plenty of things to celebrate. We worked hard to enhance and expand our contribution as an IP geolocation provider to make 2020 the best year yet!

Despite all the upheaval experienced throughout the world, we were fortunate to have a global team already accustomed to remote work. While so many of our colleagues and friends around the world adjusted to a new normal, our team was able to offer insights about remote work and productivity, supporting others facing these unexpected changes.

Along the way, we also welcomed some new partners. Plus, we developed new features, improved upgrades, and continued our mission to offer better services than ever before.

Now that 2020 is safely in the rearview mirror, let’s take a step back and celebrate how far we've come.

Data

Because we specialize in IP data, we're constantly improving and advancing our data offering, and 2020 was no exception.

Here's a brief look at how we've expanded our data.

Our IP geolocation became even better!

This year our data has grown more than ever before. Since so many of our customers need to know they can trust our IP information to provide reliable website security, accurate online personalization, and much more, we've continued our mission for industry-leading data accuracy.

Here's how we've gone about this: more data sources, better ground truth for data comparisons, and enhanced algorithms. And as always, our in-house team continues to improve and deliver the best IP address information.

Launching Host.io – Domain Data Product

While we've accumulated vast amounts of domain name data over the years, we haven't ever offered this information as a service. However, after so many customers requested access to these details, we built and launched Host.io, an industry-leading domain data provider.

This site collects data on every known domain name from every TLD and then updates our database every month. Users can get a list of outbound links, backlinks, redirects, server details, or IP address details for any given domain within seconds.

VPN Detection API

We also added a Privacy Detection API that reveals various methods used to mask a user's true IP address, including VPN detection, proxy detection, tor usage, or a connection via a hosting provider, which could potentially be used to tunnel traffic and mask the true IP address.

IP Address Database Download

This new feature provides data downloads for IP geolocation, IP ranges, carrier, company, etc. as daily downloads to give you access to our latest and most accurate information. The data is the same as we provide via our API so you can be assured of the quality. In addition, we provide the data in any format of your choice (eg. CSV, JSON, MMDB) and/or customize the fields.

Anycast IPs Detection

We developed this feature in record time because many of our users have expressed how valuable it is to them. Since Anycast IP addresses don't have a single location (e.g. 8.8.8.8 could both be located in the US and Europe depending upon where it's connected from), our Anycast IP Detection helps you avoid meaningless data.

Brand New Bulk Upload Tool

This year we also launched our new bulk upload tool! Designed for those who don't want to perform multiple searches or set up additional API integrations, this tool allows users to submit a CSV or text file containing IPs or ASNs. Our system then processes the file and notifies the user via email when the additional data is available.

Better Tools And Features For Customers

Our team has also been busy building and releasing additional tools and features, creating useful content (e.g. case studies and use cases) to better serve customers. Here are some of our most recent developments:

Case studies and use case pages

In 2020, we continued to add use case pages to our site to showcase more of the real-world applications for our IP data in different fields.

• Financial Technology Use Case Our API provides accurate, real-time IP address data to financial institutions both large and small. For starters, users can protect data from unwanted visitors, cater to the global customer with localized currency data, provide clients with targeted advertisements, leverage location data to prepopulate sign-up forms, and much more.
• AdTech Use Case As the Adtech industry expands by the day driving digital marketing campaigns worldwide, our data can help promote growth and generate new business. Our APIs make it possible to engage with customers and on a data-backed foundation, so your team can keep up with the rapidly changing industry.
• Transfergo Case Study One of the fastest international money transfer services on the market, Transfergo needed a way for their immigrant customer base to feel secure and supported when sending money quickly to family back home. Using IPinfo’s Geolocation API, they were able to eliminate the need for customers to provide proof of residency in order to complete money transfers across borders. The result? An efficient, streamlined process that increased conversion rates.

API Landing Pages

In 2020, we unveiled our API landing pages. Geared to give more information about each data type, these pages ensure that customers can learn about our APIs before signing up for a free trial.

IP Tools

• CIDR Converter Designed to quickly convert CIDR notation to IP ranges, this tool helps identify more IPs within a network.
• Reverse DNS Lookup Our rDNS tool reveals the hostname associated with an IP address. With this simple search feature, our users can now discover more accurate information about IP addresses visiting their site.
• What Is My IP? Now our site visitors can see for themselves how accurate our data is simply by visiting this page. Showing information from hostnames to the operating system, this tool helps customers experience how precise our data is.

IPinfo Team and Brand

Growing Our Team

It's been a busy, productive year! And to keep pace with all the progress, we've also added a few more team members. As a result, we've grown and enriched our support, data, and development teams.

So even though 2020 was a year of global upheaval, we're celebrating the fact that we were able to expand our remote team and help more customers get the data they need.

Partnerships & Integrations

• Snowflake. This year we also entered into a partnership with Snowflake, the cloud data platform, to be an IP address data provider on the Snowflake Data Marketplace. Businesses that leverage Snowflake as their cloud data platform can now use IPinfo for geolocation data for all public IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
• Datadog. We are also pleased to partner with Datadog in their mission to accelerate security investigations, providing highly accurate and relevant threat intelligence data by constantly researching both malicious and benign activity. Additionally, we categorize and label their threat intelligence so that you know whether an IP address was associated with an attack, a scanner, or an anonymizing service.
• Heficed. In March 2020 we partnered up with Heficed, the leading IPv4 leasing platform. With our help, Heficed is now able to retrieve accurate information on the IP ranges put up for lease on their platform, specifically IP geolocation and WHOIS data.
• Maltego. Recently, we also launched a new partnership with Maltego - an open-source intelligence and graphical link analysis tool. Used for cybersecurity, fraud investigations, and person of interest investigations, Maltego and IPinfo's platforms work hand in hand to empower threat intelligence teams, providing a complete picture for each investigation.
• Graylog. Towards the end of 2020, we also started another exciting partnership with Graylog. They specialize in making log data more usable, getting faster answers from data, lowering costs of data analysis, and empowering non-tech users. Now they're licensing and integrating our data into their product. With this new partnership, Graylog cloud users receive geolocation and ASN enrichment data alongside all their log data.

If those integrations weren't enough, we also partnered or created integrations with Splunk, Zapier, Chrome, Demisto (Paloalto Networks), Let'sEncrypt, and Polarity in 2020 to eliminate more barriers between data and action.

IPinfo Trademark

We've been around for seven years, providing accurate IP data for 100,000+ businesses and developers. But as of this year, we're excited to announce that we officially have a trademark for IPinfo! It's been a long time coming. We also want to shout out to our remarkably flexible and customer-oriented team that's helped us get to this point.

Thank You

Our successes this year would not have been possible without your support. The suggestions and feedback of our users are valuable resources for many of the improvements we make. We hope you will continue to share your thoughts with us in 2021!

If you want to say a quick hello or share your thoughts about the 2020 year with IPinfo, send us a message on Twitter or via our contact page. We'll also post feedback and holiday wishes in our Slack so our team can keep growing and developing along with you.

From the whole team at IPinfo, we hope that your holidays were merry and that you're looking forward to a new year as much as we are! We can’t wait to bring you even more innovations as we keep our commitment to delivering the best IP address data anywhere.