So instead, they generally use third-party registers, which you can think of as a phone book that’s been published by a different company. See, it’s not convenient or easy for websites to use an official register. However, not every website or service uses official IP address registers. If every single service and website used official IP address registers to determine where their traffic was coming from, there would be no issues and thus no need to write this article. Every single server and IP address that HMA has at its disposal operates on official IP address registers, and is 100% accurate by those standards. Now, HMA VPN - and every VPN, for the matter - operates using official IP address registers, which are the definitive lists of every IP address in the world, and the location that’s tied to that address. We hope you’re not getting as sick of reading “IP address” as we are of writing it. So all a website has to do is take an IP address, search for its match in the IP address register, and it will tell that website where that IP address is coming from. What’s an IP address register?īasically, it’s like a phone book for the internet: it has every single IP address in its region (there are 5 regions worldwide) saved in it, that lists information about the ownership of the IP address, technical contact details, addresses, and more. Rather, they use something called an IP address register. It’s what allows websites to pull up different versions of their pages depending on if they see a PC or a mobile device trying to access them, and to pick which language to have up by default.īut it’s not like websites or services can just read the IP address and figure out all that information. For the purposes of this article they’re functionally the same: they use a number of bits (32 and 128 bits, respectively) that can quickly help websites and services identify what device is trying to connect to them, and where that object is located in the physical world. While this simplifies things immensely, there are mainly two different kinds of IP addresses: IPv4, and IPv6. In brief, it’s a numerical ID (kinda like your social security number) that identifies attributes of every connected device on the web. So, to understand how this works, we first need to understand what an IP address even is. Now, for the long and drawn out version: what even is an IP address? It’s sadly unavoidable, and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it, but it’s not the VPN’s fault. If a website or service doesn’t use official information about your IP address to figure out where you are, then it’s possible you’ll appear in a different location on that site than your VPN says you’re browsing from. Long story short: different websites and services have different ways of determining where your location is. This is going to get complicated, so what’s the fast and simple version? But there have been times when people have noticed that in spite of their VPN saying their IP address is supposed to be disguised as one place - say, Ecuador - certain websites or services think they’re actually somewhere else - Paris, for example.ĭoes that mean your VPN is broken? Mislabeled? That for a brief moment reality folded on itself and Ecuador and Paris were in the same metaphysical location and you’ve captured a once-in-a-lifetime illustration of illogical relationalism and mereological phenomenon playing out before your eyes? One of the main draws of a VPN is its ability to hide your IP address and make it look as if you’re browsing from somewhere else in the world - hell, that’s half our marketing right there.
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