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VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

ipinfo.io

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Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#181

Post by reincoder »

ctippett wrote: post #23

I get advertisements for VPN providers almost everywhere. I've never been interested, but I do subscribe to Mullvad via Tailscale. So, I'm thankful and appreciative that they did their due diligence and partnered with a reputable provider. I've been very happy with the service. Edit: Welp. How could this possibly be my most downvoted comment. Am I not entitled to an opinion? I ain't no AI.

I work for IPinfo. We provide IP geolocation and VPN detection services. We identify which IP addresses are associated with a VPN and the actual location of the IP address.

We have not collaborated with any VPN companies for the report and have not even requested permission or pre-draft approvals. We had the data of what we were seeing and published a report based on that. We have published a ton of resources around the nature of VPN location in the past. Our focus is on data accuracy and transparency.

After the article was published, we received feedback from only a single VPN provider - Windscribe (https://x.com/ipinfo/status/1998440767170212025). I do not think anyone from Mullvad, iVPN, or any other VPN company has reached out to our team or our founder yet.

We are happy to take feedback and comments and are even open to a follow-up!

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#183

Post by TimeBearingDown »

drnick1 wrote: post #180
supermatt wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wireguard and remove Apple and Tailscale from the equation entirely I agree you could send them a preconfigured pi, but can we stop pretending talescale is just wireguard - there is a lot of convenience in the NAT traversal that you otherwise need router config and/or a publically routable server to achieve.

> but can we stop pretending talescale is just wireguard That's precisely the issue. It introduces additional centralized dependencies and closed source components.

Good thing there’s headscale.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#185

Post by laz »

reincoder wrote: post #173
preinheimer wrote: post #134

I'm a co-founder at WonderProxy, we didn't make their list (we target people doing application testing, not consumer VPNs). We're in 100+ countries, and I'll stand by that claim. It's a huge pain in the neck. In our early years we had a lot of problems with suppliers claiming to be in Mexico or South America who were actually just in Texas. I almost flew to Peru with a rackmount server in my luggage after weeks of pr…

I work for IPinfo. I have raised a ticket internally, but I think we focused on consumer VPNs for this test. For our ProbeNet, we are attempting to reach 150 countries (by ISO 3166's definition). We are at around 530 cities. Server management is not an easy task. We do not ship hardware, but operate using dedicated servers, so this reduces one layer of complexity. To maintain the authenticity of our server locations,…

Google, Apple, and Meta (maybe others?) have the data to build a complete GeoIP dataset. None of them will share because there are only downsides to doing so.

When FB was rolling out ipv6 in 2012, well meaning engineers proposed releasing a v6 only GeoIP db (at the time, the public dbs were shit). Not surprisingly, it was shot down.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#186

Post by devilbunny »

drnick1 wrote: post #167
devilbunny wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have friends or family in your home country that will run an AppleTV box with Tailscale for you as an exit node? I can't get into work from a non-US IP, but I can Tailscale back to my house and it works just fine. I even gave my in-laws (who live several states away) an AppleTV box running TS just to have another endpoint if for some reason the power goes out at my house while I'm gone (rare, but happens).

Why do you need an AppleTV box and Tailscale for that? Use any PC (even a Raspberry Pi or any cheap "thin client") with Wireguard and you remove Apple and Tailscale from the equation entirely while keeping your setup 100% self-hosted.

I don’t work in technology, so my knowledge base is almost certainly in the bottom 10% (or lower) of HN readers. I can install Linux, or a BSD, and following guides I can be reasonably certain that I am doing so safely, which puts me comfortably in the top 10% of all users out there.

It’s not what I’m comfortable setting up for myself that is the issue; I am willing to put up with oddities for something that is just for my convenience and amusement. The problem is what I am knowledgeable enough to fix from far away if and when it goes wrong, and how to explain to my very non-technical family how to access it.

I have a NAS, and I could roll my own with that (in fact it’s my exit node at home, because I’m fairly sure it has better encryption speed than the AppleTV), but when something I’m in charge of maintaining goes in someone else’s house, the last thing I want to spend my spare time doing is trying to diagnose and fix issues over the phone with people who don’t own a computer.

It’s not the perfect solution to every situation. It is reliant on Tailscale and Apple, and there are cheaper, more capable systems (like the RPi) out there if you have the knowledge and inclination to set them up. But it’s a very, very straightforward solution that is unobtrusive and easy to maintain and thus is extremely well-suited for my needs. I thought it might be for OP as well. Anyone who is willing to shell out €360 a year for a truly residential-IP VPN should at least be made aware that it’s an option.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#187

Post by supriyo-biswas »

HotGarbage wrote: post #16
why-o-why wrote: post #11

I tried to use ProtonVPN when I switched over to ProtonMail a year ago. But so much of the web does not work when you're on a VPN. For example even HackerNews has VPN restrictions. More and more sites know where VPN endpoints originate. How will VPNs prevent this in the future without them just become easy to block?

Apple, for better or worse, has been able to use their size to pressure sites into accepting connections from their Private Relay service. If VPN usage becomes the norm, sites will have to give in eventually.

It’s not a VPN service in the usual sense, and does not allow you to change locations, and they also have a mapping of IP addresses and the served geographical users.

I also assume being a service that requires an expensive device and that the browsing happen through Safari limits the abuse somewhat.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#188

Post by flexagoon »

reincoder wrote: post #179
Papazsazsa wrote: post #4

Cool, even our privacy protection is fraught with scammers and liars.

I work for IPinfo. No, the article does not make this conclusion at all! It was carefully written to highlight the nature of virtual locations of VPN exit nodes and does not make such conclusions. The article is written by our founder, who is accessible to the VPN industry at large and is open to feedback and comments.

> I work for IPinfo

Ngl, I never knew that those IP location tools are actual companies with full time employees. I always assumed they were just made by some random guy in an afternoon by wrapping maxmind API. Interesting to hear that that's not the case (at least for ipinfo; maybe some of the consumer-oriented IP lookup websites are like that)

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#189

Post by ericdiao »

Another related but non-VPN story related to IP geolocation:

Big techs (most notably Google) is using the location permission they have from the apps / websites on the user's phones / browsers to silently update their internal IP geolocation database instead of relying on external databases and claims of IP owners (geofeed etc). And this can be hyper-sensitive.

I was traveling back home in China last year and was using a convoluted setup to use my US apartment IP for US based services, LLM and streaming. Days into the trip and after coming back, I found that Google has been consistently redirecting me to their .hk subdomain (serving HK and (blocked by gov) mainland China), regardless of if I was logged in or not. The Gmail security and login history page also shows my hometown city for the IP. I realized that I have been using Google's apps including YouTube, Maps and so on while granting them geolocation permission (which I should not do for YouTube) in my iPhone while on the IP and in my hometown.

After using the same IP again in the US with Maps and so on for weeks and submitting a correction request to Google, it comes back to the correct city. (The tricks of restarting the modem / gateway, changing MAC address to get a new IP is not working somehow this time with my IS.

Re: VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits

#190

Post by Izkata »

ryanwhitney wrote: post #171
godelski wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit curious about how that works. I love Mullvad but routinely I find sites like Reddit completely block it. Even yesterday someone posted a Debian wiki link[0] and I was blocked. It's not all of them but Reddit is a big killer. So I thought China would block all of them (aren't they known?) Fwiw I'm not switching from mullvad [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252366

I use obscura—which routes through mullvad—and the reddit problem is very annoying. I finally hit the point of searching for mirrors yesterday and turns out, they exist.[0] It’s really only suitable for lurking or being able to view search results, but it has eased the pain a bit. 0: reddit-viewer.com

> It’s really only suitable for lurking

If you're not just lurking, log in and reddit doesn't block you.

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