Ask HN: VPN causes IP geolocation to work backwards?

4 pointsjaydenmilne3y ago6 comments

Has anyone ever heard of this happening? A family member is using Wireguard to VPN to my home server while traveling in the UK, strictly for privacy/security reasons (can only use insecure wifi).

Slowly but surely, Google services have begun to think my very residential (ASN 54329) IP address is in the UK. Youtube ads, then Youtube itself, Google search results, and lately Youtube TV even refuses to work. My roommates claim Netflix has even started showing UK content!

Is this some VPN detection/abuse system gone haywire?

It is quite creepy that Google is obviously pairing precise location data from my family members iPhone to my fairly static IP address. It's also odd that I have other roommates with their own phones (Android, iPhone) presumably also feeding Google precise locations from this IP, but the UK one is overriding it.

It seems like if this was some abuse prevention thing it shouldn't be this easy to fool in reverse.

6 comments

panarky3y ago

I don't know about the other Google services, but geolocation for YouTube TV seems to be pretty difficult to defeat.

We have a YouTube TV family plan but we don't all live in the same city. You can travel temporarily, but if anyone accesses it from a different city for more than a couple weeks, their access is disabled until they return to the home city.

I tried having a family member in another city watch YouTube TV via Wireguard to get an IP address in our home city. That simple trick failed because Google uses their phone location to determine their real location.

Is the UK traveler routing their phone through Wireguard, such that the phone's geolocation is being linked to your home IP?

Nextgrid3y ago

Do you provide location data to Google and submit to their stalking?

If Google gets hints from a variety of sources (some hard-to-fake like nearby cell towers) from someone that has been feeding them plausible data for years, they will believe those hints more.

If you don't give them the same hints (such as by not using Android or Google products, running ad blockers, not having a Google account with verified and hard-to-fake location-dependent payment information such as a card from a local bank), then it's somewhat reasonable for them to go by the info the other person is providing.

bombcar3y ago

If they keep switching to UK or searching UK things and Google doesn’t have very good IP data for you, they may be polluting it.

DerekBickerton3y ago

> Youtube ads, then Youtube itself, Google search results, and lately Youtube TV even refuses to work.

Do you get a CAPTCHA when you visit Google.com?

rossdavidh3y ago

Are you 100% sure you're not actually in the UK now?

jaydenmilneOP3y ago

I'm pretty sure we fought a war over that, but I could be wrong

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