I haven’t paid a lot of attention to this until a website told me “your location doesnt match your selected country”. So i checked my location and it said Canada, even though im connected to brazil on surfshark. I tested it again and selected Ukraine, which told me i was in the netherlands.
anyone know how to fix this?
Hi, since we often implement new servers in particular locations, the IP address databases of those servers have not been updated by the particular websites you are trying to use. That’s why it shows that you are connected from a different location instead of the server that you have originally chosen.
It will take some time for databases to be fully updated - we suggest using other servers in the meantime. 
Additionally, you can check the location of this IP address in a different database here: https://ipleak.net/.
Feel free to share more details with us at [email protected] as well.
Some websites use your cookies/javascript/language to get or guess the ‘picture’. Perhaps try again with a ‘clean’ browser (delete cookies, etc.). When I set SS to Germany and go to Ikea, I get the German Ikea reference.
A good browser is Brave or Firefox with privacy extensions for example.
Its happening to me aswell. I cant connect to Portugal, it always sends me to the Netherlands and sometimes even shuts down my internet.
Help
I was testing this just now actually, and have a story from a few months back.
I have an appliance that I’ve told to use the Dublin remote location for VPN. However, when I ran a bittorrent tracking tool I ended up coming out of Netherlands. I was told by support I was “routed to a server more optimized to handle bittorrent traffic”, which is not acceptable in the least. I told surfshark via configs where to connect, that’s where I intend to connect and stay connected.
Just a few minutes ago I checked this again to see if there’s any difference only to find out I’m connected in to a US IP.
Honestly… this is really problematic and the kind of thing that gets ppl in trouble if they don’t pay attention.
Never seen that website before but it’s also showing my real country as well as the VPN, does that mean surfshark isn’t hiding it?
How long should I wait for it to update to the correct location? Brazil is still showing Canada location
Would this include the IP checking websites? I thought they would be smarter than this
Edit: I can still try what you’ve suggested but it sounds pretty stupid if all those “what’s my IP” website are going off cookies etc
Hi, we’d like to investigate your specific situation, could you reach out to us at [email protected] or via live chat on our site?
We’ll gladly help after we find out more details.
There’s no estimate on how much time it takes for such IP database changes to occur. However, if you see your real location, that might be an issue. Could you contact our support team so we could take a look?
The ‘problem’ lies with the GeoIP databases. There are worldwide databases, but not always up-to-date. IP information is distributed via different sources, like ARIN, ISP’s, etc.
So, when a VPN IP address rotates (once in a while), there is a delay in processing. For example, a German IP changes to an Ukraine location. This has to be updated in the GeoIP database (doesn’t happen in real time).
Some IP detecting websites use their own databases or update slowly, etc. Amazon has its own and private GeoIP database that can’t be updated by ISP’s.