Most of these providers are in fact open about the fact that these locations are “virtual”, so it’s misleading to say they don’t match where they claim to be.

There is however an interesting question about how VPNs should be considered from a geolocation perspective.

Should they record where the exit server is located, or the country claimed by the VPN (even if this is a “virtual” location)? In my view there is useful information in where the user wanted to be located in the latter case, which you lose if you only ever report the location of servers.

(disclaimer: I run a competing service. we currently provide the VPN reported locations because the majority of our customers expect it to work that way, as well as clearly flagging them as VPNs)

I work for IPinfo, and I appreciate your comment.

Our product philosophy is centered on accuracy and reliability. We intentionally diverge from the broader IP geolocation industry's trust-based model. Instead of relying primarily on "aggregation and echo", we focus on evidence-backed geolocation.

Like others in the industry, we do ingest self-reported IP geolocation data, and we do that well. Given our scale and reputation, we receive a significant volume of feedback and guidance from network operators worldwide. We actively conduct outreach, and exchange ideas with ISPs, IXPs, and ASNs. We attend NOG events, participate in research conferences, and collaborate with academia. We have a community and launch hackathon events, which allow us to talk to all the stakeholders involved.

Where we differ is in who our core users are. Our primary user base operates at a critical scale, where compromises on data accuracy are simply not acceptable. For these users, IP geolocation cannot be a trust-based model. It must be backed by verifiable data and evidence.

We believe the broader internet ecosystem benefits from this approach. That belief is reflected in our decision to provide free data downloads, a free API with unlimited requests, and active collaboration with multiple platforms to make our data widely accessible. Our free datasets are licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0, without an EULA, which makes integration, even for commercial use straightforward.

I appreciate you recognizing that our product philosophy is different. We are intentionally trying to differentiate ourselves from the industry at large, and it is encouraging to see competing services acknowledge that they are focused on a different model.

Yeah, Proton is quite explicit about that: https://protonvpn.com/support/how-smart-routing-works