ICBM Address

What Does ICBM Address Mean?

The phrase “ICBM address” in IT refers to a specific type of
address or signature used in the USENET newsgroups forums of the 1980s and
1990s. Because of a project called the USENET mapping project, USENET addresses
included areas for geopositioning information (longitude and latitude) in order
to pioneer some early digital geolocation systems predating modern GIS.

Techopedia Explains ICBM Address

Because the 1980s and 1990s were also part of the Cold War
era, the geolocation of the USENET addresses used for the USENET mapping
project were sometimes referred to as “ICBM addresses” in reference to Soviet
long-range missiles. But experts point out that an address used for missile
delivery would need additional locating information. Since the decline of
USENET over the 1990s, “ICBM address” is now a neat bit of cold war arcana.