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I just noticed a strange behaviour for my virtualization cluster (Proxmox).

The external IP of the cluster is registered for a German company.

When I e.g. access Google via the GUI of my internal Linux Mint management VM, Google thinks I'm from Columbia. It happens from any non-graphical VM in my Cluster too (when checking with curl).

I wrote a small JS script which logs my Geolocation, when access is allowed and checked my location via some websites.

When I don't grant access to my location, the browser thinks I'm from Germany (due to my ext. IP I guess). When I do, it thinks, I'm in some Café in Bogota.

It was a little scary to me due to never having searched the web in a language which isn't English or German and never specifying I was from Columbia.

The VMs obviously have no wifi and random MAC addresses so there should be no possibility to trace the location via Google's "wardriving" on wifi APs.

Any ideas on this are greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

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    You should really ask the question of the Support of your German Provider.
    – harrymc
    Commented Jun 26, 2022 at 10:31
  • I didn't try that yet but there should be nothing wrong with it. The external gateway in my public IPv4 net has an IP address which is correctly located in Germany. Probably I got you wrong? Thank you.
    – Thomas B.
    Commented Jun 26, 2022 at 10:39
  • To get any answer here, you should really specify the external IP of the cluster (warning: this would be insecure).
    – harrymc
    Commented Jun 26, 2022 at 10:44
  • Yes, that's no thing I'd like to do. I am just interested in the general techniques involved in the geolocation services to probably get an idea where it fails. The most basic geolocation works via the IP address. Then if available the GPS data from a device equipped with GPS hardware. Then some stuff where they try to detect the location via MAC addresses which are linked to access points they discovered wardriving for Google Maps. But how should any more than the first be applicable to virtual machines?
    – Thomas B.
    Commented Jun 26, 2022 at 10:46
  • What location did you see if you visit ipaddress.my? I just want to make sure your IP geolocation is correct.
    – Michael C.
    Commented Jun 27, 2022 at 6:47

1 Answer 1

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As far as websites are concerned, the IP address is all they have for doing Geo-localization.

The IP is allocated by your ISP. It is possible that your ISP is indeed in Germany, but that it bought an IP range from a Colombian company, so this totally confuses the Google website, and even more so if it also tries to refine the localization by other parameters that may be available from your browser.

IPv4 addresses are basically exhausted, so that buying or renting from another company is now the only method for a new ISP to get IP addresses.

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  • This happened to Linode back when they originally opened their London datacenter: they had IP blocks that had previously been assigned to a Russian company, and it took several months for all geolocation databases to update. I imagine it's going to be extremely common now, since practically the only remaining way to get IPv4 addresses in 2022 is to buy them used.
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Jun 26, 2022 at 11:41
  • Thank you both, I guess that's the issue. I ordered the IPv4 subnet with my server and it took a few days to get it. My hoster probably bought it from a Columbian provider...
    – Thomas B.
    Commented Jun 26, 2022 at 12:54

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