How does Amazon/Audible know my country with VPN and private browsing on?
How does Amazon/Audible know my country with VPN and private browsing on?
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.
On what device? Android, iOS and Windows have a Region option where you select your country, the browser and any apps can read this trivially.
On iOS. My VPN is set to USA and I’m logged into amazon.com (not .com.au).
Where would this setting be?
- Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Region
- Settings -> YOUR NAME -> Media & Purchases -> Account Settings -> Country/Region
Both must be changed to a different region to fully switch. Requires a valid payment method from that region (e.g. a debit card from that region). There are consequences to changing regions too, so be careful.
From my experience, sometimes you also need to contact Apple support to finish the change process. Otherwise it may just revert back.
Overall, Amazon surely knows where you are now and it will be set in your Amazon account, I suspect there is nothing you can do.
The best way to achieve what you want is to boot something like TailsOS and create a new account while under the VPN in that region. With a payment method from that region.
VPNs are not magic. Most big companies nowadays have means of detecting actual user locations, which is pretty trivial if you use an app or an operating system that leaks data when under the VPN.
It's definitely this. I often forget that my Amazon account is tied to Canada (even with a .com.au email address) and it's only when I see how cheap shit is that I realise I'm actually on amazon.com not amazon.ca
timezone + language settings is another option
This might be it. I gave up and purchased from my desktop and the same steps worked straight away without issue. Maybe Amazon has access to phone info that I’m unaware of.
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.
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.
Full disclosure, I don't use Nord so I am not an authority. The following is just what I have been told. Take from it what you will, and research what you like. I believe Nord has a somewhat checkered history, including a security mishap that caused privacy concerns amongst users, making it harder than necessary to delete your account, and even charging for renewal after canceling the sub because they kept the card on file (happened to a mate from work). They opted to leave Nord a while back when their split tunneling broke or something like that. I also heard Nord was purchased by a company (name escapes me atm) that was buying up other VPN services and also had their hands in selling targeted ads. 🤷
Proton or Mullvad are typically my 2 recommendations. If you also have a desire for an entire ecosystem, Proton will provide that as well for marginally more than the price of just their VPN (mail, cloud storage, calendar, password manager, email aliasing). I have also had nothing but good experiences with Mullvad VPN and they come at a consistent price of $5/mo.
Helped my coworker (mentioned above) make the leap from Nord to Mullvad and they seem very pleased with it. Easy to use and very affordable. Mullvad also has a very functional Linux client if interested. Proton's Linux GUI is very lackluster, but their CLI is reliable if I remember correctly.
Hope this helps! 🍻
Edits: spelling and links.
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.
As someone who jumps between the US and Canada (since on the border) I've found that, Amazon will block purchases from Canada to the US and visa versa, it doesn't care about ip, it uses your accounts region, Canada and US have seperate regions in your account settings that you need to do. Sadly this means you would need two different accounts. One for CA and one for US. It's likely the same deal with audible
@Pika @supercheesecake dont wanna butt in but in case this is relevant: I use at least 3 Amazon regional accounts here in Europe: UK, Germany and Italy (I live in another EU country). I sign in with the same username/password. Currency of products changes for UK from EUR to GBP, and often different ranges of products can show up. I have multiple addresses listed for delivery and just select the one I want.
Audible and Amazon accounts are the same. I have an AU account and a US account. But I’m only using the US account to buy the audiobook in the US store, using VPN and private browsing. No CC or similar involved.
But from Australia. So how does Amazon know I’m in Australia?!
From a privacy point-of-view I thought VPN masks such things. I’m trying to understand how Amazon is detecting my physical country.
Aside from device ID, or maybe if you're using a billing address as something from Australia, I can't see how they would be, you've stated location services are off, VPN will mask the ip.
I didn't even need to use a VPN in my cases between Canada and the US, changing to an account that was in the region that allowed the purchase was all I had to do.
That being said if I changed my Canada account to use the billing address of my US residence instead of my Canadian residence when on the Canadian region, I would get region locked I found, so if you have a primary payment method on file using your AU address you could try temporarily removing or modifying it to have a different address
i didn’t see if anyone else asked already; was your phone connected to the internet via wifi? or cell data?
Probably DNS?
To verify assumptions, are you sure it's available in your impersonated country? "in your country" isn't specific and can apply to both.
with my US account
Isn't that the reason they deny?
Did you not change your accounts and browser sessions country?
It’s the version that comes up from a search for that book when using the USA Amazon or Audible site from my USA account plus with a USA VPN on. So I’m assuming the search results are for USA available titles.
As far as I know, Amazon should see me as being in the USA. Hence why I’m confused.
Appreciate the suggestions though.
If you have geolocation enabled or don't block location requests, that could be another way. VPN can't protect you from geolocation.
Thanks. Still happened with location services disabled phone-wide.