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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

#301

Post by devilbunny »

lxgr wrote: post #265
devilbunny wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have run into the firewall problems before. Even seen them that block authentication but -if already connected to the tailnet before joining the WiFi in question - will continue to pass data. OpenVPN would not connect and couldn’t handle the IP address switch. At worst, I turn on phone hotspot, authenticate, then switch back to WiFi. A purely serendipitous discovery on my part, but a very welcome one.

Interesting, maybe they block the orchestration servers of Tailscale, but not the actual data plane (which is almost always P2P, i.e., it usually does not involve Tailscale servers/IPs at all)?

I'm sure they do, but the question is, why did OpenVPN fail? It's pure P2P. I've got a dynamic DNS through afraid.org, and that resolves on that network, so it's not just DNS-level blocking. I effectively have a static IP anyway; there's no CGNAT going on, so I've discovered that I misconfigured my DDNS once or twice only when afraid.org emailed to tell me that I hadn't updated in X months.

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

#302

Post by vpShane »

YouAreWRONGtoo wrote: post #292
ssl-3 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of links and have used it, but I don't think I've ever used links2. Am I correct to assume that links2 is more of the same/better? (Also: Your comment seems perfectly sane, but it was already marked as "flagged" by the time I saw it 18 minutes after it was submitted. I vouched for it. But I wonder: Whose ruffles did you panty in order for your comments to land this way?)

> Am I correct to assume that links2 is more of the same/better? Most distributions install links2 as links. > But I wonder: Whose ruffles did you panty in order for your comments to land this way?) I don't know, but most people on voting based forums don't like what I have to say, even though I am almost always right. For example, when I say that Linux is an operating system using a software development methodology…

Naw you'll have to email dang and ask him they have a auto system, I got auto shadow banned once and had to email them, they said I didn't do anything wrong and then restored all my comments. I went like 3 months thinking nobody liked my comments enough to give me an up point. Worth reaching out about their auto mod is sensitive

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

#303

Post by duxup »

super256 wrote: post #274
reimertz wrote: post #13

I know multiple people who worked / working at Mullvad and they take their business, security and privacy _very_ seriously. Not surprised to see them shine here.

Has anyone else from Europe noticed how Mullvad's speeds and latency have becoming worse and worse during peak times in the recent months? I now have to change servers regularly, which was never the case ~2 years ago.

It has certainly been wildly variable for me.

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

#304

Post by varenc »

reincoder wrote: post #206
varenc wrote: post #54

Interesting to learn you can identify the real country/area of origin using probe latency. Though could this be simulated? Like what if the VPN IP just added 100ms-300ms of latency to all of its outgoing traffic? Ideally vary the latency based on the requesting IP's location. And also just ignore typical probe requests like ICMP (ping). And ideally all the IPs near the end of the traceroute would do all this too. To…

I work for IPinfo. We also run traceroutes. Actually, we run a ton of active measurements from our ProbeNet. The amount of location data we process is staggering. https://ipinfo.io/probenet Latency is only one dimension of the data we process. We are pinging IP addresses from 1,200+ servers from 530 cities, so if you add synthetic latency, chances are we can detect that. Then the latency-related location hints score…

If the VPN IP and the last ~4 hops in the traceroute just ignored ICMP pings, or just all inbound traffic, it sounds like that'd make your detection harder?

I've found that this isn't even that uncommon. One of the example VPN IP's on the article had the last 3 hops in traceroute ignoring ICMP. (though TCP traceroute worked). The VPN IP itself didn't, but it easily could!

(feel free to ignore lest we not give bad actors ideas)

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

#305

Post by standyro »

chneu wrote: post #289
Semaphor wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that common outside the us? I know of exactly one family here in Germany having Apple TV.

The only folks using Apple TV in 2026 are like 60+ yrs old. I've literally not seen one in anyone's home for probably 5+ years. And even then nobody used them. Apple TV was one of those products that relatively few people bought but they were loud about buying it, so it seemed more popular than it was. Then other services like Roku($20) quickly replaced it. I'm in the USA.

Roku became adware and most of my friends/family switched to AppleTV

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

#306

Post by Beijinger »

Fernandadsc wrote: post #207
Beijinger wrote: post #6

I am not sure that I really understand what they did. I am also missing some major VPNs in the list. I currently use AirVPN but this has something to do with my use case and pricing. Why do you want to use a VPN? - Privacy - Anonymity (hint: don't!) - unblock geolocation - torrents - GFC The last point is the hardest. https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy/vpn-services/

I work at IPinfo, thanks for your comment/feedback. We will be expanding this research to include more VPNs next year.

Yes sure. Please include AirVPN and Astrill.

But again, it depends on your use case. Very few can drill thought the GFW

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

#307

Post by illusive4080 »

hxtk wrote: post #52
drnick1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing is that they accept crypto. I wouldn't want to pay for a VPN with a credit card in my name.

But you have to get money into your crypto wallet somehow, which makes it relatively easy to deanonymize for most users (serious crypto privacy enthusiasts could of course pay cash for their crypto or perhaps mine it themselves) if they're looking at your traffic specifically, but hard if you're only worried about bulk collection. IMO the coolest privacy option they have is to literally mail them an envelope full of…

You can exchange common coins into Monero and Monero is fully private.

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

#308

Post by ericdiao »

reincoder wrote: post #224
ericdiao wrote: post #189

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 usi…

Some of our (IPinfo) services are hosted on GCP, and because our service is widely used (with 2 trillion requests processed in 2024) people sometimes say they cannot access our service. It is usually due to how Google's device-based IP geolocation is used. The user's IP address is often mistakenly identified as being located in a country where Google does not offer service. I have seen a Europe-based cloud hosting pr…

Yeah. This can be a problem.

The device-based IP geolocation, because the algo is so sensitive and the result can be altered with few devices behind the IP (at least for Google), can be used theoretically steering / trick big techs to believe that the IP is at location it is not, just like VPN providers in your article by publishing "bogon" geofeed etc. This defies their purpose of doing this in the first place: geolocking and regulatory requirements.

The "tech" is already there: browser extensions [1] that overwrite the JS GeoLocation API to show "fake" locations to the website (designed for privacy purpose). also dongles are available on gray market that can be attached to iPhone / Android devices to alter the geolocation API result by pretending it is some kind of higher precision GPS device but instead providing bogon data to the OS. Let alone after jailbreaking / rooting your device, you can provide whatever geolocation to the apps.

[1] https://github.com/chatziko/location-guard

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

#309

Post by Footprint0521 »

whatevermom2 wrote: post #196
simlevesque wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would easily pay €30 a month for a VPN in my home country that uses a residential IP and isn't noticeable. I am aware that those exist, but 99% of them are shady. For residential IPs you can't even pay per month like normal VPNs, normally they charge per GB, usually over $2 usd per GB.

Prices are more in the 0.30$-0.45$ range if you know where to go, from my experience.

Where do you go?

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

#310

Post by dsl »

reincoder wrote: post #256
dsl wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my previous company we had a subscription to Spur Intelligence. It is like Palantir for IP address info, and probably the closest to what you are talking about. They recently added GeoIP to their data and in the bit of testing I was able to do before I left it was scary good . I also had an amusing chat with one of their engineers at a conference about how you can spoof IPInfo's location probes...

> how you can spoof IPInfo's location probes... Interesting. I would love to know how this is possible. Like with Geofeed or something else?

I don't think it is fair to IPInfo to give the specifics publicly, because once you have the "ah ha" moment you realize it is an entire class of difficult to address problems with how they use their sensor network. That knowledge only helps the bad guys.
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