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One benefit of using a virtual private network (VPN) is concealing your location. But if that’s your main goal, you might be surprised to learn that some apps can still tell your real location.
Why VPNs Can’t Completely Hide Your Location
When you connect to a VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN provider’s server. Then, when you send or receive data over the internet, it is transmitted through the tunnel and routed to the destination by the VPN’s server. In this setup, the VPN server is the middleman that handles internet packets on your behalf.
By accessing internet resources on your behalf, the VPN effectively conceals your identity. It does so by using its IP address instead of your real IP address, so any websites or applications you access will see the VPN server as the party accessing the resource and not you. To the website or app, your location is the location of the VPN server’s IP address.
This works fine for duping services or apps that rely on IP addresses to tell your location. However, this strategy isn’t foolproof, as there are other ways that apps and websites can tell your location without using your IP address.
Using Your GPS Data
Smartphones and tablets have a built-in GPS that can be used to tell the device’s current location. Especially on mobile, apps use data from the GPS sensor to determine your location. For instance, navigation apps like Google Maps and ride-hailing apps like Uber use your GPS data to determine your location precisely.
That’s why even if you connect to a VPN and open an app, your current location won’t change unless you physically move to a different place. This is because connecting to a VPN only changes your IP address; it doesn’t alter your GPS sensor data.
As such, these apps can still tell your real location regardless of your VPN settings. But of course, there’s a way to trick such apps by using location spoofing. Check out our article on the differences between location spoofing and VPNs for more details.
Checking Surrounding Wi-Fi Networks
Another trick some apps use to determine your real location is checking surrounding Wi-Fi networks. Every Wi-Fi access point has a unique MAC address (also called a BSSID) broadcast to nearby devices. Your device can detect these nearby Wi-Fi networks even if you’re not connected.
This feature allows you to scan and connect to nearby Wi-Fi networks easily. However, some companies use it to create large databases of Wi-Fi MAC addresses and their geographic locations.
So, even with a VPN connection, location spoofed, or GPS disabled, some apps can send the list of nearby Wi-Fi addresses to a Wi-Fi location database to determine your approximate location. In this case, VPNs aren’t that useful for tricking apps that use nearby Wi-Fi networks to determine your location.
Using Bluetooth and Nearby Devices
Some apps can also determine your real location using Bluetooth and nearby devices. Smartphones and other Bluetooth-enabled devices broadcast their presence to nearby devices.
Apps can determine your location by detecting these signals and then comparing the identity of nearby Bluetooth devices to data stored in databases that link them to specific physical locations. This is partly how Find My Device works even when your phone is switched off.
In some places like airports and retail stores, small Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices (known as beacons) provide location-based services like indoor navigation, where GPS can be less effective. By detecting these beacons, some apps can tell your location by identifying specific beacons mapped to physical locations.
Using a VPN is great for accessing geo-restricted content, protecting your data on public networks, or browsing the internet anonymously. However, to conceal your location from apps, look elsewhere since some apps don’t rely on your IP address to determine your location.