Curious Ebay msg re device details

[Fluke]

I've just logged into eBay after a long time which triggered an email to alert me to the fact. It gave me the date and time of the login, fine, the device, which it had down as 'OS X (Safari 14.0)' all good so far, but for the approximate location it gave 'Barking & Dagenham, Greater London, United Kingdom'. I'm not even in London never mind B&D. Any ideas where they're picking that location up from?

Not a problem (I think), just curious to know.

[Infrasonic]

Your ISP's exit node. I get the same thing - London - even though I'm oop north.
It's why if you want accurate location tracking on your mobile phone for maps/directions etc. it will need to access GPS/wifi hotspots rather than just ISP internet.

[Fluke]

Your ISP's exit node. I get the same thing - London - even though I'm oop north.
It's why if you want accurate location tracking on your mobile phone for maps/directions etc. it will need to access GPS/wifi hotspots rather than just ISP internet.

Thanks! that explains that then. Out of interest is that exit node info visible anywhere in settings?

[Infrasonic]

https://whatismyipaddress.com/

VPN's will give you the ability to change your exit node location -either for privacy or geoblocked services purposes.
Just be aware that WAN IP addresses can get grey/blocklisted - with VPN's the issue is scammers/phishers etc. using them to hide their true location (often in conjunction with spoofed MAC addresses to obfuscate the device ID and minimise tracking).
You can start to get those 'prove you're not a robot' website challenges with a dodgy IP address, especially if there's been a recent spate of DDoS website attacks and the CDN security sensitivity has been amped up.

[didds]

Your ISP's exit node. I get the same thing - London - even though I'm oop north.
It's why if you want accurate location tracking on your mobile phone for maps/directions etc. it will need to access GPS/wifi hotspots rather than just ISP internet.

Thanks! that explains that then. Out of interest is that exit node info visible anywhere in settings?

not in settings, as its effectively belonging to the ISP.

Its the WAN address of your router which you can probably see via the router's admin connection, or easier via https://www.whatismyip.com/

didds

[UncleEbenezer]

This is very common online: they map your IP address to a location, but the mapping is very ropey. Back in the '90s, I recollect appearing from Moscow and Minnesota, all from the same location just outside Rome (where some folks I met who worked for Ericssons would routinely be placed in Stockholm).

Over the past year or so I've most often appeared "from" somewhere in Cheshire, so at least it's got the country right even if it's north of six hours away.

[Lanark]

In the US the ip mapping is good enough to figure out that you are in for example Texas, in the UK it is accurate enough to figure out that you are probably in the UK which is somewhat less useful, the big american websites don't really care all that much about customising anything for our small island.

[88V8]

Ebay seem to be casting about for ways to improve security or appear to improve it.
For a while I was plagued with CAPTCHAs, now that's gone and instead they advise me every time I log on that there has been 'activity' on my account.

And Paypal began using 2FA, now that seems to have stopped as well.

What next....

V8