An analysis was conducted on the accuracy of the location data of exit nodes claimed by VPN providers. Out of 20 tested VPN providers, only 3 consistently provided correct information about the countries of exit nodes. 6 providers disclosed virtual (not confirmed upon verification) or immeasurable (countries from which traffic was not recorded) data about the country in more than 50% of cases, while 3 providers revealed discrepancies from 30% to 49%. Some claimed to have infrastructure in over 100 countries, but in reality, routed traffic from a few data centers in the US and Europe.
A total of over 150,000 exit IP addresses were analyzed, as claimed by VPN-providers covering 137 countries. Verification was performed through routing analysis, RTT (round-trip time), and packet delivery delays. The country information for approximately 8,000 (the key to connect to is specified, and iroh finds the associated host and establishes an encrypted connection using the QUIC protocol). Direct P2P connections are established whenever possible, but if not, it falls back to using relays, which are also employed for host discovery by keys. You can run your own relay or connect to public relays supported by the community. was found to be inaccurate. The discrepancy between the declared and actual country could reach several thousand kilometers. 38 declared countries turned out to be virtual and no traffic was recorded from them.
One of the reasons for the discrepancies is the inaccuracy of data in Whois and registrar databases. The issue is that such databases are populated based on the registration details of IP address owners and the data they provided. This information is not verified, which can lead to situations where a company provides incorrect location information, fails to update outdated data, or is registered in one country while hosting infrastructure in another. The accuracy of information in GeoIP services, such as MaxMind, IP2Location, and Digital Element, is also called into question, as they claim 99.5-99.9% accuracy of country information without verifying the actual location.
Source: opennet.ru
