Why does Vivaldi show different foreign IP addresses to Microsoft websites?
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I remember when Microsoft required Edge to use Bing Chat that, "Vivaldi masquerades as Microsoft Edge when visiting Bing." (Vivaldi bypasses restrictions to access Bing Chat. Improves Workspaces.)
I figured it was just user agent, but now am wondering if perhaps Bing Chat was not available in all regions? So the Vivaldi team took it into their own hands to put us in a different region? Or if it does that to prevent tracking by Microsoft, although, I'm pretty sure Microsoft would know where we were no matter what.
Anyway back to the topic question. I was looking at my sign-in activity from my Microsoft Account and it shows I am in Dublin, Ireland. I went to a website that informs me of my public IP address and it shows my home country. I decided to ask Bing AI (or whatever it is called nowadays) what my IP address is and it says I am in Virginia, United States.
I did search online for VPN and Vivaldi but all I can find is Vivaldi team scuffing at people wanting Vivaldi to implement a free VPN (understandable) and VPNs, proxies and privacy blog post. I cannot find any other information on a VPN or any other masking techniques?
I do have Block Trackers and Ads selected under Privacy and Security and was wondering if that is the reason why this is happening? Although Google knows where I am and so do other services I use and it seems to be exclusively Microsoft websites (Bing related?). All other browsers on all other machines regardless of OS shows me as being in my country, in Microsoft websites and would like to know how I can have that be the same on Vivaldi?
I have no add-ons/extensions, VPNs (browser or otherwise), proxy, etc.
Thanks for any insight someone can provide, I really appreciate it!
Edit: Changed title from "Does Vivaldi mask our ip address for certain websites? i.e. Microsoft/Bing"
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No, Vivaldi really couldn't mask you IP address without a proxy, and they wouldn't want to do that.
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Hmm...that does technically answer the title of my query so thanks for that. I think it would be good to rephrase it, since my reason for posting was wishing for that behavior to not occur.
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@MaleficWelter Bing AI might not be able to actually pull in that information, so this is probably case of a chatbot hallucination. Looking up the IP address it provided shows it is owned by Microsoft, so it likely pulled that info in while training. The IP isn't even in Virginia, USA, it is in Washington, USA.
If you search regular Bing, it will give you the correct IP address.
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@nomadic Oh that is a very good point about Bing. In fact, in Firefox it refuses to tell me my IP address and instead tells me to look it up myself.
But what I am wondering about is Microsoft Account's Sign-in activity under Security settings. I would think that would be more accurate and important for Microsoft to get right?
Edit: I just checked both IP addresses and they are both owned by Microsoft. I guess I learned something. That security tab on websites is a joke! Thank you very much nomadic!
The only reason I even asked about this, is because someone said that if you were not in your own country (VPN, etc.), Microsoft Rewards points would not be assigned to you. And they are not being assigned to me in Vivaldi but are in Firefox and the only difference between the two is the IP addresses listed in the 'Security' tab. Maybe there is another reason why it does not work in Vivaldi, but I guess I can just use Firefox for my searches.
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I get it, Bing Chat is giving you it's IP address by it asking the question of other sites. Okay, makes sense. (and no hallucination required)
If I ask it "What is my user agent" the response indicates I am Bing's bot, as another example (and even Edge wouldn't claim to be bingbot)!
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm) Chrome/116.0.1938.76 Safari/537.36 -
@sgunhouse Do you think it would have been best to leave out the Bing part and have only mentioned Microsoft Account's Sign-in activity under Security? Because Bing is the only part that is being discussed and I do wholeheartedly agree with both of you.
Although as I posted above you, apparently Microsoft Account's Security is just a false sense of security, since it is showing their address not mine.
Edit: Realized that people might not actually know what Microsoft Account's Sign-in activity or recent activities is about:
While yes, I get that it is 'a Microsoft site' I do not get why their site, which is designed to show my activity, so that I can make sure no one else around the world has logged into/compromised my account, by showing me my information, would instead show me Microsoft's. That's the part that seems strange to me and I cannot explain, or why it only happens in Vivaldi.
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The whole Dublin thing is probably again a Microsoft site - they have their EU headquarters there, same as Google (for tax reasons). Beyond that I couldn't guess.
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It's interesting to learn that these discrepancies might not directly relate to Vivaldi itself but could be due to how certain services interpret or display IP information. The points raised about Microsoft potentially showing their own IPs in user activity logs, and not those of the users, highlight the complexities of digital privacy and security. It's a good reminder of how interconnected and opaque online services can be, and the importance of understanding the tools we use daily.
