Privacy

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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 [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To verify assumptions, are you sure it's available in your impersonated country? "in your country" isn't specific and can apply to both.

with my US account

Isn't that the reason they deny?

Did you not change your accounts and browser sessions country?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It’s the version that comes up from a search for that book when using the USA Amazon or Audible site from my USA account plus with a USA VPN on. So I’m assuming the search results are for USA available titles.

As far as I know, Amazon should see me as being in the USA. Hence why I’m confused.

Appreciate the suggestions though.