Hi,
Actually it isn't really about hiding your IP. Here is an explanation, sorry it is a bit long but important to explain. We will be adding it to our FAQs soon.
Q: I’m using SecureLine to connect via New York, but website XYZ claims I’m visiting it from London, why?
A: Websites often attempt to identify the location of their visitors based on their IP address. This process, called IP geolocation, is based on looking up the IP address in a database that pairs together IP address ranges and geographical information. The information in this database can be inaccurate (or even completely wrong) for several reasons:
There are several independent providers of these databases. We at Avast do our best to provide all the major providers with accurate information about IP addresses used by SecureLine servers, but how fast this information is reflected in the individual databases depends on their respective maintainers.
The website may also be using an outdated version of the geolocation database. IP address ranges are sometimes reused in different locations or even change ownership, so older versions of the databases get more and more inaccurate over time.
Some major websites (Google, for example) maintain their own databases, based on what user traffic they saw coming from the IP address in the past. While this approach is usually very effective, its results are suboptimal at best for VPN services like SecureLine, where the group of users behind a single IP address can be very diverse.
In certain locations, we use rented dedicated servers to provide the SecureLine service and the IP geolocation databases are updated by the server provider on our behalf. Sometimes, they erroneously indicate that the servers are located in Czech Republic (because Avast, as their customer, is a Czech company). Whenever that happens, we work together with the providers to update the information with the actual location of the servers.
So, I hope this helps you understand why the location shown when you do an IP address test sometimes does not correspond to the location you actually connected to.
Best regards,
Davidek
