Cloudflare CDN is revealing my location
I've had this issue for sometime but normally my IP's location is somewhat generic to any other ip in my subnet but for a while now, upon searching my own ip where I have a home server hosted it shows a really accurate location. I have disabled IP Geolocation and refreshed my ip. Nothing really helped.
29 Replies
Most likely your ISP is just providing super specific geofeed data to Maxmind/etc
Different Geo Databases have different policies on specificness, some go more broad
Upon checking another IP from the same subnet that's not in any connection with Cloudflare (on the one that I have the issue I only use Tunnel) there isn't the same location "super specific" geodata. That's also confirmed on MaxMind as it shows the generic location that should have been. On check-host.net only when I enter my IP I get the result from Cloudflare CDN, others do not get that.
CF's maxmind could be a few weeks behind if it changed recently to be less specific, could also be something about Maxmind's Enterprise vs normal offerings
as far as I know/have seen Cloudflare simply uses Maxmind for everything and doesn't layer anything else on top of it
The geolocation setting was turned off about a month ago. Also it started happening ever since I switched to UniFi, could this be something on their side?
Which geolocation setting?
In the domain I use for tunneling my home server I went to network and disabled this. Thats what I've seen on the Cloudflare forum.
All that changes is what request headers Cloudflare sends specifically to your website. It has nothing to do with what other Cloudflare websites would see from your IP
I see. So technically right now there is no reason MaxMind sees my location far more accurately even though I have refreshed my IP.
Maxmind sees whatever geodata is fed to them by your ISP/their other sources (corrections submitted, etc)
Well I'm confident my ISP doesn't have anything to do with this so I guess I will contact Ubiquiti. That's pretty much it I guess.
Ubiquiti is your router?
Yes
they won't be revealing any of your ip location data lol
It's not going to be related. You could submit a correction request to Maxmind, but not sure if they would accept "its TOO PRECISE" lol
Well I figure that but as said ever since I have switched over to Ubiquiti it's been like that.
would be surprising, yea
correlation and causation, huh
If the rest of the IPs in your range/same announcement are more vague (probably ISP data), then I'd guess there was a manual correction update just for your specific IP
It's really unusual, another line that I have in relatively same place is not getting this so that's why I'm quite confused about this situation.
chaika already answered this
if your isp determined that your ip is of "specific interest" they will provide more specific geolocation data on it
simply because they can make more money off it
Yea I guess. I started a chat with UniFi support maybe it's something I did. If that's not the case (most likely) I'll contact my ISP.
complain to your isp, there are very few other parties that are even able to access your location like that
unify are not one of them
how would your router even have more precise location info to begin with? Not like they have GPS's in them
Well on setup it knew exactly where I was.
Didn't give it anything
it?
every bit of information u are giving is screaming ISP
I'm trying to avoid ISP as their reputation is really good and privacy has been a strong point over other ISPs in my country.
don't need to get confrontational with them immediately, just point out that you noticed unusually high geolocation accuracy for your IP, and ask if they have anything to do with it
Alrighty I will.
depending on your location however, some geolocation data may always be very accurate.
if you live in a city with a cloudflare datacenter then the trace colo will always most of the time be for your city :akarishrug: