I need to use user's IP address to get their approximate location like country, state and if possibly city. Do laws require me to get user's permission to use their IP address to find their location via geoip2 ? I am not planning to use location information for targeted advertisement. It will just better serve user to use web application. Are these laws same in USA, Europe and Russia?
Whenever your website or application collects data from your users, it’s typically a legal requirement to write a privacy policy.
As long as you mention the data you’re collecting in there, you should be okay, just as long as you’re using lawful means to collect. For example:
As a rule of thumb, if there’s data to collect, Google’s already collecting it. If it’s in their privacy policy, you’re probably fine to do the same thing.
When you use Google services, we may collect and process information about your actual location. We use various technologies to determine location, including IP address, GPS and other sensors that may, for example, provide Google with information on nearby devices, Wi-Fi access points and mobile towers.