Privacy

31996 readers

1241 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

How does Amazon/Audible know my country with VPN and private browsing on? (aussie.zone)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by supercheesecake@aussie.zone to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Title.

Trying to buy an audiobook with my US account from Australia. Am using a VPN and a fresh log in using a private browsing window. Still getting the “not for sale in this country…”

How does Amazon/Audible still know my country?!

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your suggestions, but I feel like we’re no closer to figuring out how Amazon is detecting my physical country. If they have some new “trick” surely this is a privacy issue as well?!

EDIT 2: Important details, this is on my iPhone using both the Amazon and Audible apps, and via the web with Safari (mentioned below). Doesn’t work.

I gave up and went to my desktop and was able to complete the purchase following the same steps without issue. So 🤷‍♂️ ?!

Clearly Amazon is scraping some information from the phone to region lock the purchase. Still would love to know given VPN isn’t masking my location apparently.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] DrPen@mastodon.social 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

@Pika @supercheesecake dont wanna butt in but in case this is relevant: I use at least 3 Amazon regional accounts here in Europe: UK, Germany and Italy (I live in another EU country). I sign in with the same username/password. Currency of products changes for UK from EUR to GBP, and often different ranges of products can show up. I have multiple addresses listed for delivery and just select the one I want.

[–] Pika@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

that's similar to how I do it, change the region and then pay, but some items I've noticed block sale if the originating payment method is in a different region

[–] DrPen@mastodon.social 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@Pika Id have to log into the new region from he start, go find the same product, then order. I dont think it would work if I change region half way through a purchase.

[–] Pika@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

oh sorry if I was unclear, yea since it's still a different account I would need to login when I change regions as well, I can't change halfway through.

[–] DrPen@mastodon.social 2 points 1 year ago

@Pika no probs! Sometimes the products arent available for whatever reason in a region.

load more comments (2 replies)