Browser detects wrong country location

dslam10

My Polestar is bought and driven in Canada. Whenever I stream from Canadian based sites e.g., CraveTV, Sportsnet, I get a message which says "Streaming is not available in your region". Also, when I listen to free Spotify, I receive advertisement which are based in the U.S.

According to Polestar Support, the issue is with Vivaldi browser as it detects the originating sim service provider, which for Canadian Polestar 2 are from the US AT&T. is this correct? I would have thought browser detects the location based on the network service currently being used. In my case, the service (even though roaming) is Canadian based. What is the correct behaviour?

luetage

Polestar support stating “Vivaldi detects the SIM service provider” is somewhat misleading in my opinion. Vivaldi doesn’t care about your IP address, websites do. Your car is just another client on the internet and clients broadcast their IP address. Your IP address is assigned to you by your internet service provider, in your case AT&T. Neither Polestar nor Vivaldi can do anything about the fact you apparently have been assigned a US IP address. At this point I could tell you to contact AT&T about it, but I don’t know whether they care. Aren’t they infamous for their bad customer support?

So, either change provider or look for a workaround. A VPN could help, but not sure whether that’s a good idea in a car.

dslam10

@luetage Thanks for your reply. Since I’m ‘roaming’ in Canada, my IP address should be assigned based on my location regardless of where my sim originated. It would be nice for Vivaldi to confirm that their browser behavior is not something that is different.

luetage

@dslam10 You have to wait for a developer to make sure. But I would be very surprised, if Vivaldi somehow messed with the IP address. As I see it the most likely scenario is that the network you are roaming in doesn’t issue an IP address and your original one is used.

Hadden89

@dslam10 A quick test you can do is to check IP, but especially the country you get.

If polestar Canada is using AT&T US servers is likely expected to encounter Geo Blocks.

Even if vivaldi would be able to spoof the location with Canada, still the IP could scream USA.

Also, any browser works this way, so the tech support reply is quite misleading.

Tl;Dr: To be identified as canadian, you should get a canada IP from polestar/at&t.
GPS still can give you the exact point of where you are in canada, but won't help for geoblocks.

@luetage A VPN used to be located where you actually are. Funny to think about that