> I am not sure that I really understand what they did.

They checked where the VPN exit nodes are physically located. A lot of them are only setting a country in the whois data for the IP, but do not actually put the exit node in that country.

▲

Beijinger 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, I don't understand the advantage or disadvantage of this. Let's say I need a Colombian IP address, I would figure it out pretty quickly it this was not genuine, except if the geo-block protection would be fooled too.

Most of the "problem" countries are tiny places. Monaco, Andorra etc. It might be tough to rent a server there. And your list of clients should be minimal.

▲

luckylion 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can easily test this, of course -- the problem isn't that you, the user, cannot find out, it's that you pay for being able to use an endpoint in those countries and can't, because they don't exist.

It's not only small countries either, it affects much of Latin America, including Brazil (PIA's servers were in Miami for BR as well last time I checked). I've occasionally seen it also affect US states where e.g. Massachusetts would be served from Trenton, NJ.

▲

IshKebab 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I would figure it out pretty quickly it this was not genuine, except if the geo-block protection would be fooled too.

It would (unless the blockers use this company's database I guess):

> The IP registry data also says “Country X” — because the provider self-declared it that way.

That could be good or bad depending on what you're using the VPN for. E.g. if you only care about evading stupid local laws like the UK's recent Think of the Children Act, then it's actually great because you can convince websites you're in Mauritius while actually getting London data centre speeds.

But if you want to legally be sending your traffic from another country then it's less great because you actually aren't. To be honest I can't really think of many situations where this would really make a difference since the exit point of your network traffic doesn't really matter legally. E.g. if a Chinese person insults their dear leader from a VPN exit node in the UK, the Chinese authorities are going to sentence them to just as much slavery as if they did it from a local exit point.

	▲	nostrademons 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If the government is using the same fake data as the rest of the Internet you want to be using that fake data too. You want to be precise, not accurate. If the FBI records your endpoint as Iran and you say "I wasn't actually sending traffic from Iran, where there are sanctions, I was sending from London but my VPN provider lied on their WHOIS record", you will be in just as much trouble as if you were actually sending data from Iran.