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 supercheesecake@aussie.zone to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[-] StalksEveryone@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

so its your original account? the same one you started with before getting the vpn

[-] supercheesecake@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have a US Amazon account linked to a US home address and credit card. But I now live in Oz.

Audible uses your Amazon account. And regardless, I’m using an Audible credit for this purchase, so no actual payment anyway.

EDIT: and just to clarify, this is my US Amazon account I’ve had for years

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023

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