[reincoder]

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 provider's IP ranges located in countries where Google does not provide service. This is because these IP ranges are used as exit nodes by VPN users in that country.

Device-based IP geolocation is strange. We prefer IP geolocation based on the last node's IP geolocation. We hope to collaborate with Google, Azure, and other big tech on this if they reach out to us.

[ericdiao]

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