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I'm using VPS hosting based on Windows Server 2008. The machine is physically located in the US and I'm connecting via RDP using mRemoteNG from my home in Europe.
It's easy to Google many "IP address locator" websites. If I open these on the VPS machine I can see that some of them show the valid location (United States, North Carolina, Charlotte) but the other ones are able to reveal my actual, exact physical location in Europe!!! How is that possible?
net2000
Posted 2011-11-11T03:57:06.640
Reputation: 21
Via an RDP session? It isn't. Are you logged into Google in the RDP session? – Paul – 2011-11-11T04:04:49.500
I'm not logged in anywhere except for the VPS machine itself. I have even installed a fresh Chrome browser on the VPS just to see if the results gonna be the same as IE. These websites are still able to reveal my European location :( I don't understand that at all. – net2000 – 2011-11-11T04:09:31.787
1I don't think it can be working out your location from the RDP session, it must be gleaning it indirectly (I'll bet if you had someone log into the VPS from Japan, it would still say Europe). Does the server have a DNS entry with a domain name registered in Europe? Is it using DNS servers based in Europe? – Paul – 2011-11-11T04:38:41.893
The VPS should act like an inpenetrable proxy in your case, it just isn't possible that the sites see your PC behind the VPS. Make sure the ip address sites always show the VPS ip tho. I have an idea though. It could be that your browser sends locational information (there's an API for that). And for some reason some shmug programming that feature decided it would be nice if it, if possible, used the location of the IP which connects into the current PC using RDP. This is entirely possible because some sites take the location from geoip, some from the browser's locational API. – sinni800 – 2011-11-11T06:57:17.640