web ads in other languages

[Skaperen]

i lease a server in another country. i run my desktop over a VPN to that server, sharing its IP addresses (1 each in v4 and v6). my web surfing is showing more and more ads in the language of that country which i cannot read. on youtube i get to hear the language, too. this seems to be an interesting way to obscure the ads from my mind to let me not be distracted.

web site operators seem to think my IP address is were i am. so i have them fooled for now. do you think they will ever figure it out? even Google is making this assumption.

are you a web site operator that uses an IP to geo-location lookup to select ads?

[poorpockets-mcnewhold]

They´re a lot of differents factors that can actually break that ¨VPN protection¨. Here´s a little example trough a panopticlick test.
https://imgur.com/LLfNb4m.png
What can we got, that can proof that i´m actually french, despite the VPN (Which is in Germany):s
- Https_accept headers = It´s currently setup as preferring to see content in French, and secondary in English. As English is extremely used language, this isn´t something we can rely on, but from all the Internet users, requesting french content is pretty rare.
- Timezones = The results aren´t really clear, but it correspond to GMT+0200 which correspond to the correct time zone.
- The language of my browser, setup in French.

That´s was only a little example of some ways to proof with a certain surety of your location, but they´re still a lot of other ways to have more information, and even ¨Bypass¨ your VPN.

[mastablasta]

well you could still be Belgian, Congolese, Chadian, Algerian...

Though if you had for example Czech language set up, it would be pretty obvious. :)

[Skaperen]

i have done no language setup, so i presume it is the default, either English or none in particular. i am guessing the latter since i do get content in a site's home language(s) quite often.

[Skaperen]

i am in USA but my server provider is in EU. many local sites are now days rejecting my visits because of the new privacy laws in EU. they are ass-u-mi-ng i am in EU. VPNs can be an interesting way to foo many sites. i should set up a VPN in AWS.

[mastablasta]

rather than protecting the user's privacy they block access to the site. hmm...

[Skaperen]

yes, many site block access, now. they are unsure how EU laws affect them, even though they are in USA, not EU. there is this presumption that an IP address reveals their geographic location. it is a good guess, but it still is a guess. it reveals their provider.

[johnsonmartincox]

Hello skaperen, there are many factor work behind this. if you use VPN in that case language is change automatically and browser can also saved the cookies. if you start your system without VPN you realize some advertisement are still show in different language. (if you do not clear all data of your browser). please clear all cookies and cache from your browser and restart the browser once. Thank you