Your VPN's Location Is a Lie

The 85% Deception Rate

Security, privacy, trust: those are the three words VPN companies sell you. IPinfo’s new investigation suggests you might only be getting one of them, and not the one you think. The company tested more than 150,000 VPN servers from 20 major providers and found that 17 of them are misrepresenting where your traffic actually exits.

This isn’t a tiny edge-case involving obscure locations nobody clicks on. IPinfo’s data shows an 85% deception rate across the providers it examined, affecting marquee names that advertise “100+ countries” and glossy maps dotted with flags. When you tap “Bahamas” or “Somalia” in the app, there’s a very real chance your packets are quietly popping out of a data center in Miami, London, or France instead.

That gap between the marketing map and the physical world is not a cosmetic bug. VPNs are supposed to be the tools you use when you don’t trust anyone else on the network: your ISP, your hotel Wi-Fi, the government at the other end. If the privacy product itself bends the truth about something as basic as where your traffic goes, the entire trust model starts to wobble.

Scale is what makes this report hard to hand-wave away. IPinfo’s Probe Network used thousands of vantage points to run pings, traceroutes, and latency measurements against those 150,000 exit IPs, across 137 countries and every popular protocol you’d expect. Only three providers had exit locations that consistently matched what their apps claimed.

That matters for more than bragging rights on a pricing page. Jurisdiction, data retention laws, and law-enforcement reach all hinge on the actual country where a server sits, not the flag next to it in your app. If you think you’re routing through privacy-friendly Switzerland and you’re actually in the US or UK, your threat model just changed without your consent.

There’s also the mundane question of value. People pay for VPNs to unlock regional streaming catalogs, dodge censorship, or cut latency for gaming and work. When “Japan,” “India,” or “Norway” are just virtual labels stapled onto the same handful of European and US data centers, you’re not getting the privacy, performance, or access you were sold.

Your 'Swiss' Server Is Actually in Miami

Fire up your VPN, tap the Norway flag, and queue up Netflix for a night of Vikings and subtitled crime dramas. You expect your laptop in Chicago to magically appear, at least digitally, as if it lives in Oslo. That’s the whole fantasy VPNs sell when they brag about “100+ countries” and “global presence.”

Under that fantasy, your data path sounds simple. Your encrypted traffic should go from your device in the US, through a VPN tunnel to a physical server sitting in Norway, and then out from there to Netflix’s infrastructure. Netflix sees a Norwegian IP, assumes you’re in Norway, and hands you the Norwegian catalog.

Reality often looks nothing like that clean diagram. IPinfo’s probe data shows that for 17 out of 20 major VPNs, the supposed “Norway” exit is frequently sitting in a completely different country. Your traffic can leave your laptop in New York, hit a server in London or Miami, and then head to Netflix while still wearing a “Norway” IP mask.

To Netflix, everything appears legitimate because IP-based geolocation drives its decisions. If the IP block is registered or geo-fed as Norwegian, Netflix serves Norwegian content. But your packets never physically touch Norway; they bounce between the same old data centers in the US, UK, or Germany.

This gap between logical identity and physical reality is the core problem. VPN apps present a map full of flags, but many of those “locations” are just virtual labels mapped onto a handful of real machines. IPinfo found VPN exits advertised in places like the Bahamas or Somalia that actually terminate in France, the UK, or the US.

From a routing perspective, your path looks more like: device → encrypted tunnel to London → Netflix, while the IP address screams “Oslo.” The jurisdiction, latency, and network path all belong to the UK, not Norway. You get the content you wanted, but none of the geographic properties you thought you were buying.

That’s how your “Swiss” server ends up in Miami, your “Norway” node lives in London, and your threat model quietly falls apart behind a pretty list of flags.

How They Pulled Off the Ruse

VPN providers pull off this geographic shell game with something they blandly call virtual locations. On the app’s map, you see flags for 100+ countries; under the hood, many of those flags point to the same handful of physical machines in big Western data centers. IPinfo’s scan of 150,000 exit IPs shows how common this trick is: 17 of 20 major providers used it at scale.

Here’s the core move: a provider acquires a block of IP addresses that official registries say belong to an “exotic” country such as Somalia, the Bahamas, or Nepal. Those IPs might be registered in regional internet registries or advertised in geo feeds as being located in Mogadishu or Nassau. On paper, everything about that address range screams “Somalia.”

Instead of shipping hardware to Somalia, the VPN company maps that Somalian IP block onto a physical server in Frankfurt, London, or Miami. That mapping happens at the software and routing level: the VPN’s control plane simply assigns those IPs to a server’s network interface, then advertises routes so global traffic for those IPs terminates in that safe, well-connected data center. No one at the border of Somalia ever sees a packet.

Streaming services and websites rarely question this. They use IP-based geolocation: if the IP’s registry and popular databases say “Somalia,” the service assumes the user sits in Somalia and serves local content, licensing rules, and sometimes localized pricing. To Netflix or a sports broadcaster, your traffic looks like it’s emerging from East Africa, even though it just bounced around Western Europe.

VPN companies love this setup because it cuts cost, risk, and paperwork. Deploying real hardware in politically unstable or low-infrastructure regions means unreliable power, poor connectivity, and legal uncertainty. Parking everything in Frankfurt, London, or Ashburn lets them advertise “137 countries” while operating from maybe a dozen physical hubs.

IPinfo’s VPN Location Mismatch Report – How VPN Providers Misrepresent Server Locations found that 12% of these virtual locations sit more than 8,000 km from where they claim to be. That distance translates into higher latency, different legal jurisdiction, and a reality where your “Somalia” button is mostly a UI illusion.

Unmasking the Lie: Inside ProbeNet

IPinfo did not stumble onto this problem by accident. The company runs a purpose-built Probe Network—over 2,200 measurement nodes scattered across data centers and networks worldwide—whose only job is to poke at IP addresses and record how the internet actually behaves. That infrastructure let them turn a vague suspicion about VPN marketing into a measurable, repeatable experiment.

ProbeNet (IPinfo sometimes calls it ProbeNet or Probe Network) operates like a global sensor grid. Each probe can run pings, traceroutes, and other low-level tests against any target IP, then ship back latency and routing data. Combined, those probes give IPinfo a near real-time map of how far traffic actually travels, and how long it takes to get there.

To test VPNs, IPinfo first behaved like a normal user. Researchers grabbed configuration files from 20 major providers—using common protocols like OpenVPN—then scripted connections to every advertised country and city. Each successful connection exposed an exit IP, which went into a database for deeper analysis.

That process scaled fast. Across those 20 VPNs, IPinfo ultimately tested about 150,000 exit IPs, spanning 137 claimed countries. For each IP, they triggered measurements from multiple probes on different continents, building a latency fingerprint that reveals where packets truly emerge.

Round-trip time, or RTT, became the lie detector. Every probe measured how long a simple ping took to hit the VPN exit and come back. Because signals in fiber move at a known speed, RTT sets a hard lower bound on physical distance—no marketing page can cheat the speed of light.

Think of it like this: a probe in Miami pings a server the VPN app labels as “Bahamas.” If the RTT comes back under 1 millisecond, that traffic is almost certainly staying inside the same metro area. A true Bahamas server, across open water and extra network hops, would show a noticeably higher latency floor.

IPinfo didn’t rely on a single probe to call foul. For each exit IP, they compared RTTs from several locations: - Nearby probes (e.g., Miami for Bahamas, London for “Iceland”) - Farther regional probes - Probes in or near the claimed country

If a “Bahamas” exit looked blazing fast from Miami but oddly sluggish from Caribbean or Latin American probes, the pattern screamed “virtual location.” Repeating this across 150,000 IPs turned isolated red flags into a systemic map of where VPN traffic really goes.

A Feature or Outright Fraud?

VPN companies frame virtual locations as a feature, not a lie. They argue that planting real hardware in places like Somalia, Iraq, or the Bahamas is expensive, unstable, or outright dangerous, so they rent IP ranges “assigned” to those countries and terminate traffic in safer hubs like Paris, London, or Miami. On paper, you still get an IP that Netflix, Disney+, or the BBC think is Somalian or Bahamian, and providers can brag about “100+ countries” without negotiating racks in war zones.

From a marketing deck, that sounds like clever engineering. Virtual locations let a single data center in Frankfurt masquerade as a dozen countries, cutting costs while inflating the country count on the homepage. For users who just want to unlock a foreign streaming catalog, an IP that passes Netflix’s geo checks can feel like a win, regardless of where the rack actually sits.

From a user perspective, that framing collapses fast. People buy VPNs on the promise that their traffic exits in a specific jurisdiction, under specific laws, with specific latency. If you pick “Norway” and your packets actually exit in the UK, the core value proposition—control over where your data goes—breaks.

Lack of transparency turns a technical shortcut into a trust problem. IPinfo’s ProbeNet found that 17 of 20 major providers used mismatched locations, yet very few apps label any of them as virtual servers, “geo-routed,” or “logically hosted.” You see a country name and flag, not a disclaimer that your “Somalia” exit node is legally and physically in France.

That silence matters. Legal jurisdiction follows the real machine, not the marketing copy, so your traffic inherits French or US surveillance laws even while services think you are in Mogadishu or Nassau. IPinfo’s report shows 12% of these virtual locations sit more than 8,000 km from their advertised country, wrecking latency and performance for anyone gaming, video calling, or working remotely.

So is this a clever workaround or outright fraud? Technically, encryption and tunneling can stay solid regardless of exit geography, so security may hold up. But when 51% of ProtonVPN’s advertised 110 countries are virtual and unlabeled, the line between smart routing and deceptive advertising starts to look very thin.

The 8,000km Detour You Never Agreed To

Imagine paying extra for a “premium” VPN route to Switzerland and getting a detour through Florida instead. IPinfo’s data shows that 12% of virtual locations sit more than 8,000 kilometers from the country listed in the app. That’s a full transoceanic hop you never signed up for.

Distance on the map turns into latency on the wire. Each extra 1,000 km can add tens of milliseconds of round-trip time; stack that across 8,000+ km and you move from snappy browsing to noticeable lag. For real-time apps, those extra milliseconds feel like seconds.

Streaming exposes the lie fast. A user in New York “connecting” to a Norwegian server that actually lives in London or Miami might see: - Slower start times for Netflix or YouTube - Resolution dropping from 4K to 1080p or worse - Constant buffering when multiple devices share the line

Online gaming gets hit even harder. Competitive shooters and battle royales start to fall apart once latency climbs past 60–80 ms; a bogus “nearby” server that’s secretly an intercontinental hop can push you well past 100 ms. That’s the difference between landing a headshot and dying behind cover you thought was safe.

Download and upload speeds suffer too. Long-distance TCP connections ramp up more slowly and recover from packet loss less gracefully, so that 500 Mbps home connection can feel like a throttled coffee shop Wi-Fi tunnel. Users often blame their ISP when the real culprit is a misrepresented VPN exit.

All of this comes wrapped in marketing about “blazing fast global access” and “premium routes.” You pay for more countries, more choice, more speed—and get a service that quietly degrades your internet experience while hiding where your traffic really goes. For a deeper look at how IPinfo proves those distances and mismatches, see Probe Network: How We Make Sure Our Data Is Accurate.

Jurisdiction Roulette: The Real Danger

Jurisdiction, not ping time, decides how much protection your VPN actually gives you. When a provider lies about where its servers live, it quietly rewrites the rulebook that governs your data. You think you are opting into one country’s privacy regime, but you are actually gambling on another’s surveillance laws.

Your traffic is always subject to the laws of the country where the VPN server is physically located, not where the app’s flag says it is. Courts, police, and intelligence agencies care about hard drives and cables, not marketing pages. If the metal sits in London, London’s rules win.

Pick Switzerland in your VPN app and you probably think of banking secrecy and strong data protection. IPinfo’s research shows that “Swiss” exits can actually sit in the US or UK, both core Five Eyes members. That hop instantly drags your traffic into some of the most powerful surveillance alliances on the planet.

Five Eyes (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and extended groups like Nine Eyes and Fourteen Eyes share signals intelligence and metadata at scale. A VPN node in Virginia or Manchester can fall under: - Broad interception powers - National security letters or secrecy orders - Cross-border data-sharing agreements

Many VPNs sell “Swiss” or “Panama” locations precisely because those jurisdictions lack mandatory data retention for VPNs and have stricter warrant requirements. If your exit node actually lives in the UK, you inherit: - The Investigatory Powers Act’s bulk collection tools - Stronger data retention and logging expectations - Easier compelled cooperation with law enforcement

That mismatch does more than slow down your Netflix stream. It torpedoes one of the main reasons people pay for VPNs: escaping their home country’s legal dragnet by tunneling into a friendlier one. You are not sidestepping surveillance; you are potentially stepping straight into a more aggressive regime.

Virtual locations also complicate legal recourse. If a provider promises “no logs” in a privacy haven but secretly routes through a US data center, which country’s regulator do you complain to when something goes wrong? The provider’s terms, the VPN app’s map, and the actual rack in a Miami facility can all point to different jurisdictions.

For journalists, activists, and anyone handling sensitive data, that ambiguity is not a minor footnote. It is a threat model failure. When location lies, jurisdiction roulette replaces privacy engineering, and the house almost always wins.

Is Your Encrypted Tunnel Still Safe?

Security and privacy get lumped together in VPN marketing, but they are not the same thing. A provider can nail the cryptography and still put you in legal danger by silently dropping your traffic out of a data center you never agreed to. Virtual locations push that gap to the breaking point.

Standard protocols like OpenVPN and WireGuard still do what they promise: they create an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN server. If implemented correctly with modern ciphers and proper key exchange, that tunnel is extremely hard for outsiders—your ISP, a coffee shop Wi‑Fi operator, or a random on‑path snooper—to break. On the wire, your data in transit is probably safe.

The problem starts at the exit node. That’s the point where your decrypted traffic leaves the VPN provider’s infrastructure and hits the public internet. Whoever controls that exit—and the laws that apply there—defines a completely different threat model than the one the app’s country picker suggests.

Think of your VPN as an armored car. The tunnel is the hardened shell, the encryption, the bulletproof glass that keeps people from peeking at the cash while it’s moving. But if the driver secretly reroutes from Zurich to Miami, your valuables still end up parked in a jurisdiction you were actively trying to avoid.

Jurisdiction decides who can legally compel logs, tap traffic at the data center, or serve secret court orders. If your “Bahamas” or “Somalia” node actually lives in the US, France, or the UK, you inherit those countries’ surveillance and data‑retention regimes instead. IPinfo’s finding that 17 out of 20 VPNs mislabel locations means this isn’t an edge case; it’s the default.

So yes, your tunnel can remain cryptographically secure while your privacy threat surface explodes. You get protection against local eavesdroppers, but you lose control over which government can show up with a warrant or a gag order. The armored car did its job perfectly—then drove straight into the wrong courthouse parking lot.

The Wall of Shame (and the 3 Heroes)

Seventeen out of twenty VPNs landing on IPinfo’s radar failed a basic honesty test. Researchers checked more than 150,000 exit IPs across 137 countries and found that only three providers correctly labeled every single server location. Everyone else mixed real and virtual locations without telling users, despite marketing pages bragging about “100+ countries.”

IPinfo’s public report does not need innuendo; the numbers speak clearly. Some services misrepresented over half their advertised countries, quietly routing traffic through a handful of data centers in the US, UK, Germany, or the Netherlands. Users thought they were popping out in Nairobi or Bogotá, but their packets never left Frankfurt.

ProtonVPN, often held up as a privacy darling, did not escape scrutiny. According to IPinfo, 51% of ProtonVPN’s 110 advertised countries did not match the actual server locations, meaning a majority of its “global” footprint relied on virtual exits. ProtonVPN is far from alone, but its 51% mismatch rate underscores how deep this practice runs even among security-focused brands.

Only three unnamed providers passed with 100% accurate claims, a tiny minority in a market obsessed with inflated country counts. Those companies prove this problem is not technical inevitability, but a business choice. Accurate geolocation, transparent labeling, and honest marketing are possible; most vendors simply do not prioritize them.

This report, along with investigations like VPN Location Fraud: 85% of Providers Lie About Server Exits, should function as a wall of shame and a leaderboard at the same time. Providers that mislabel servers deserve public pressure and hard questions from paying customers. The few that tell the truth deserve equal amounts of attention, praise, and market share.

Your Checklist for Real VPN Privacy

VPNs sell trust, not just tunnels. If a provider lies about something as basic as where its servers sit, assume every other promise deserves scrutiny too.

Start with transparency. Pick services that clearly label virtual locations in their apps and documentation, and that state both the “marketed” country and the actual physical jurisdiction. If a provider boasts “100+ countries” but buries any mention of virtual servers in a blog post from 2019, treat that as a red flag, not a footnote.

Marketing pages should distinguish between: - Physically present countries - Virtual locations riding on foreign data centers - Regions reachable only via partners or resellers

If they do not break that out, they are choosing opacity over honesty.

Then move to “trust, but verify.” Free tools like traceroute, mtr, or simple ping tests can expose fake locations in minutes. If you connect to a so‑called Bahamas server and see sub‑20 ms latency from New York but 150+ ms from Miami, that server almost certainly lives on the US east coast, not on an island.

Run quick checks when you connect to a new region: - Compare ping from your city to the VPN exit - Compare ping from a cloud VM in the claimed country - Look for traceroute hops clustering around London, Frankfurt, or Miami for “exotic” regions

You do not need perfect accuracy, just enough signal to spot a server that is 8,000 km off.

Next, read the audits. Prioritize providers that submit to recurring, independent third‑party assessments of infrastructure, logging claims, and configuration, not just “no‑logs” marketing copy. Look for audit reports that explicitly mention server deployment models, use of virtual locations, and how often auditors re‑test real‑world endpoints.

Treat a VPN like any other critical cloud service: no meaningful audits, no subscription. If a company can pay influencers but not auditors, that tells you everything.

Money remains your loudest feedback loop. Cancel providers that hide virtual locations, move to those that label them clearly, and tell support teams exactly why you switched. If enough users vote with their wallets, “100+ fake countries” stops being a selling point and starts being a liability.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a virtual VPN location?

A virtual location is when a VPN provider assigns an IP address from one country (e.g., Bahamas) to a server that is physically located in a different country (e.g., Miami). Your traffic exits from the physical location, not the advertised one.

Why do VPN providers use virtual locations?

Providers use them as a cheaper, easier way to offer server options in countries where it's expensive, difficult, or risky to maintain physical hardware. This inflates their server country count for marketing purposes.

Does a virtual location make a VPN less secure?

Not necessarily for encryption, but it severely impacts privacy. Your data is subject to the laws and surveillance of the server's *actual* physical location, not the one you chose, which undermines a core benefit of using a VPN.

How can I check my VPN's true location?

You can use network diagnostic tools like traceroute and ping to measure latency to your connected server. High latency to a nearby country or extremely low latency to a distant one suggests a virtual location is being used.