Title: Hi,<p>I&#x27;ve been meaning to write this for a few years now.
I saw https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34032484 and lots of great replies there - but I happen to have an insight which I kept track of for years now.<p>Some background first. Since more than a decade I&#x27;ve been using an always-on VPN on all my devices through a VPS I operate (various cloud providers along the years).
Also for context, I stopped using all google services around 2015 or thereabouts - although I still have an account I no longer use it.
The only google service that I use rarely is google maps - of course, never logged on.
And a few times a month I use google search for the odd obscure thing.<p>Around 2016 was the first time I noticed that google.com was showing at the bottom of the page my ZIP code. It felt very unusual but I was in the process of moving so I didn&#x27;t pay too much attention. To my surprise, a few weeks later google.com was showing my new ZIP code.<p>I shopped around for cloud providers that would allow me to rotate the instance IP easily and thankfully there are many but I was curious how come google picked it up - the only plausible reason was using location data from the Google Maps iOS app.<p>Here&#x27;s how you can replicate this.<p>Get a cheap VPS from a country different than yours. Get an iOS device (ideally an (older?) iPhone but I think it should work on an iPad) - Android devices should be excluded from this test for obvious reasons.
Reset it to factory defaults (optional but removes moving parts and false leads like cookies etc).<p>Install wireguard (or your preferred always-on vpn) and configure the VPS to be used as an exit node.
Install google maps (don&#x27;t login of course) - can be used without being logged on just fine.
Install firefox focus (Safari in Private Window mode would work as well).<p>Confirm via ipinfo (or your preferred whatsmyip website) that you&#x27;re using the VPS IP
Go to google.com and confirm it&#x27;s showing at the bottom of the page the country of the VPS (could also be shown in a different language if google has a presence in that country).<p>Use the google maps app a few times a day (ideally navigate from a place to another) - it will take about 2-3 weeks but you&#x27;ll notice that google.com will now show your actual country for the VPS IP and also the google.com language will change to your own.<p>If you want to take it one step further, continue to use google maps on the iOS device. You&#x27;ll notice that after a few more weeks, google.com will show your actual City (based on the IP) - and after a while longer it will be even more precise, will show your ZIP code.<p>You have to be patient though, it will take 2-4 weeks to start with - and it&#x27;s imperative that that IP address is dedicated to this test.<p>Funny enough, I was on holiday on Mexico for a month right before reading the HN article I mentioned (have been using a VPS in the states for lower latency) and I noticed that after 2 weeks the language changed to Spanish and google.com was showing Mexico (I rotated the IP when this happened and it prompted me to write this &#x27;Tell HN&#x27;.<p>Not surprisingly but Google doesn&#x27;t share the new GeoIP data - MaxMind, ipinfo and others never changed their location data for that IP - they showed the original geoip even a few weeks after google changed theirs - haven&#x27;t checked longer than that - it could be shared eventually.<p>In conclusion - I can&#x27;t say that I&#x27;m surprised Google is using the Maps location data - and I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s any way to prevent it (outside of not running Maps - but unfortunately it&#x27;s one of the few ways of checking restaurant reviews).
My &quot;workaround&quot; is to periodically rotate my VPS IP and move on with life :)<p>Thanks for reading - I hope you found this useful.
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