Bitdefender VPN: How Is It Google Knows My Location?

DrewDrewDrew

I am unfamiliar with much tech... running Mac OSX Ventura 13.2, Safari 16.3 and BitDefender VPN 4.2.1 (4.2.1.4). I have VPN turned on to USA location - how is it when I go to Google it still knows where I am and returns search results for my neighborhood??? I thought VPN was supposed to disguise where I am. I feel like I'm still being tracked despite the VPN - what am I doing wrong??

Scott

Hi @DrewDrewDrew

I am strictly a Windows and Chrome/Firefox user, so the only thing I can offer is to clear Safari's cache, restart Safari and try a general search for like, boats, planes etc. If Google asks to know your location, don't allow it. Then scroll down to the bottom of the webpage and see if your location jives with the server you connected to in the VPN app. In my case, I connected to the Chicago server, and it correctly shows that in the search.

You can also confirm it with ip leak test site, like ipleak.net.

Otherwise, see if anything in this article may be helpful.

https://surfshark.com/blog/google-location-vpn

Kind regards,

Scott

DrewDrewDrew

Thanks, Scott!

Scott

You're welcome, Drew, Triple D :)

Alexandru_BD

In addition to Scott's insightful comment above, there's one more thing to consider.

Your Google services account has this information since you created the account. Google also makes some correlations, it doesn't serve you content based only on your geo ip.

But yes, clear cache etc. should do the trick in most cases.

Regards