11–20 of 135 posts
Are you sure there isn't a mix-up with your VPN? I travel a lot internationally and never experienced anything like this.
I mean, I'm sitting in my apartment in Seattle and Google says I'm in Quintanna Roo. Given that I don't have any devices left in Mexico, I'm not really sure what else could be happening. to be clear: my VPN is Tailscale configured to use an exit node running out of the apartment I'm currently sitting in.
Every single advertising company is exploiting every single side channel that they can. This should not surprise you.
It's getting very serious. I created an fresh anon Instagram account using a cellphone number that I used with FB. And voila, someone I know is a recommended for me to follow on Instagram. They have no shame. And no one is holding them accountable even with proof.
Are you sure there isn't a mix-up with your VPN? I travel a lot internationally and never experienced anything like this.
I mean, I'm sitting in my apartment in Seattle and Google says I'm in Quintanna Roo. Given that I don't have any devices left in Mexico, I'm not really sure what else could be happening. to be clear: my VPN is Tailscale configured to use an exit node running out of the apartment I'm currently sitting in.
This is at the bottom of the Google search results page on mobile right?
If so, that location is based on signals from a bunch of places. The logic takes as input:
* Location history in your Google account (if enabled)
* IP address location lookup from the most recent request (if sufficiently accurate)
* HTML5 location API response from previous requests to Google search on your account (since the html5 location API is quite slow, and you don't want to wait 30 seconds for search results).
My guess is you have location history disabled. And you have the html5 location API disabled. And your Seattle IP address doesn't resolve to a very precise location (so is rejected). So the last fallback is the last known location for you, which was probably the hotel WiFi in Mexico, which probably did have a precise geocode associated.
If you want to fix that, you can set a manual location IIRC, or you can enable some other location source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, I'm sitting in my apartment in Seattle and Google says I'm in Quintanna Roo. Given that I don't have any devices left in Mexico, I'm not really sure what else could be happening. to be clear: my VPN is Tailscale configured to use an exit node running out of the apartment I'm currently sitting in.
> Google says I'm in Quintanna Roo This is at the bottom of the Google search results page on mobile right? If so, that location is based on signals from a bunch of places. The logic takes as input: * Location history in your Google account (if enabled) * IP address location lookup from the most recent request (if sufficiently accurate) * HTML5 location API response from previous requests to Google search on your acc…
Yeah, but I can't. The only way I've seen hinted at doing that is letting my browser share location to Google.com and my desktop Firefox can't estimate my location anyway, on top of the fact that I'm not about to give in and fix this by just arbitrarily granting them access to more data about me.
Especially when they clearly have all of this effort around it, dialogs to try and tell me why it thinks I'm in Mexico and won't just give me a way to tell it where I am.
When I was looking for where to buy an SSD and used "shopping.google.com" earlier, I absolutely could not find how to convince it that I was in Seattle. Ironically, a private browser worked there.
And yet, I literally just sat through 3 spanish ads, again on my unsigned in TV that has been sitting in Seattle for a year.
I think you're absolutely right, it's this myriad of data. But it's frustrating that I /can't just easily override it/.
Getting it wrong in this way is rather puzzling, but it's unlikely that anyone here is going to be able to debug it without a whole lot more information about your computers. Maybe there are cookies you can delete?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, I'm sitting in my apartment in Seattle and Google says I'm in Quintanna Roo. Given that I don't have any devices left in Mexico, I'm not really sure what else could be happening. to be clear: my VPN is Tailscale configured to use an exit node running out of the apartment I'm currently sitting in.
What kind of internet connection you have in Seattle?
My Public IPv4 is: 198.244.xx.yy
My Public IPv6 is: 2604:4080:redact
My IP Location is: Seattle, WA US
My ISP is: Wave Broadband
Using IP addresses to infer approximate location is very common, but advertisers can do it other ways. Maybe Microsoft does something different? Getting it wrong in this way is rather puzzling, but it's unlikely that anyone here is going to be able to debug it without a whole lot more information about your computers. Maybe there are cookies you can delete?
But again, my gaming PC, which was offline in my apartment in Seattle, has been showing me Mexico/Spanish results in Edge. And my TV, which sits in my apartment in Seattle, is inundated with Spanish ads.
I'm starting to suspect that different Google properties are using different signals, too, which makes this extra confusing.
It's really as if YouTube has modified it's profile of me and said "oh, since he was in Mexico for 2 weeks, he must speak Spanish now" the same way they *infuriatingly* insist on switching my results to Spanish whenever I first landed (which literally was why I started using the VPN).
It's a kafka-esque nightmare of them trying to be smart and absolutely making things harder.
Using IP addresses to infer approximate location is very common, but advertisers can do it other ways. Maybe Microsoft does something different? Getting it wrong in this way is rather puzzling, but it's unlikely that anyone here is going to be able to debug it without a whole lot more information about your computers. Maybe there are cookies you can delete?
I can open private browsing on my laptop, and Google Shopping shows me Seattle results. But again, my gaming PC, which was offline in my apartment in Seattle, has been showing me Mexico/Spanish results in Edge. And my TV, which sits in my apartment in Seattle, is inundated with Spanish ads. I'm starting to suspect that different Google properties are using different signals, too, which makes this extra confusing. It'…
J/K. Have you tried all the stupid stuff like clearing your cache and logging out and back in?