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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by supercheesecake@aussie.zone to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Title.

Trying to buy an audiobook with my US account from Australia. Am using a VPN and a fresh log in using a private browsing window. Still getting the “not for sale in this country…”

How does Amazon/Audible still know my country?!

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your suggestions, but I feel like we’re no closer to figuring out how Amazon is detecting my physical country. If they have some new “trick” surely this is a privacy issue as well?!

EDIT 2: Important details, this is on my iPhone using both the Amazon and Audible apps, and via the web with Safari (mentioned below). Doesn’t work.

I gave up and went to my desktop and was able to complete the purchase following the same steps without issue. So 🤷‍♂️ ?!

Clearly Amazon is scraping some information from the phone to region lock the purchase. Still would love to know given VPN isn’t masking my location apparently.

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[-] Onihikage@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

iOS up to at least version 16 has leaked VPN traffic for years. If you only turned on the VPN to make the purchase, that might be how Amazon still knew where you were. The only workaround (always-on VPN mode) apparently is an enterprise feature in iOS that most users don't have access to.

Alternatively, since it worked on a desktop, your VPN's mobile version or iOS support may be flawed. The ones I hear the most about from privacy advocates are Mullvad VPN, IVPN, and Proton VPN. If it's a free VPN, well, you get what you pay for. If it's one of the ones I mentioned, they might be interested to work with you to figure out how Amazon was bypassing them, if the issue can still be replicated, or they might already know.

[-] supercheesecake@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Cheers, thanks for the very helpful info.

We paid for Nord quite a while ago with some special deal. I haven’t heard great things about them since though so might be time to ditch and pay for something better. I’ve heard Proton is good as well.

VPNs don’t guarantee anonymity. There’s no reason they cannot sell your data. Last I heard there isn’t any contractual obligation. Organizations like nord and surfshark are fully capable of saving your data, as well as selling it off to the highest bidder, if they choose to do so. Only services like Mullvad can guarantee anonymity because even they don’t know what you’re doing with their service.

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this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
58 points (93.9% liked)

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