I pulled up Edge (on work computer) and typed in "restaurants near me" and it brought up restaurants near Larose, Louisiana. I'm currently in Charlotte, NC. I tried the same search in Internet Explorer and it brought up York county, SC. Close, one county over. Just an interesting experiment. Any tech members know of gaps with IP addresses or is the internet search tied to some other "ping?" I should add I'm WFH today (on an in-office day).
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the ip address is what external websites see and as others have noted, it's because you aren't actually communicating directly to the external website, you're communicating to the WF network which then communicates to/with the external website.
The internal tech knows where you are.
@1awz, the ip on your personal device has nothing to do with the ip the internet sees.
What do they use for tracking when a location doesn’t have badge swipes, if they can’t use IP location?
seriously, how stupid are you?
That's intended as the firm uses a VPN. I once had my IP address pointing to Korea.
There are a bunch of proxies to the internet. So your searches will think you're in the city where the proxy is located.
You are on a corporate network, you are not directly connected to the internet.
So you get results based on where the corporate network connects, not your actual location.
I'm not sure about how WFC configures them, but browsers have proxy settings that usually set through a script. So you're browsers could be using proxies in different locations with different IPs. You can go into the browser settings and search for settings to see what script is used. You can even download the script to see what's in it.
I used to work for a group where I could see ISP locations of customer logins. It's very common for employees who log into their accounts on a work computer to show located in Charlotte no matter their physical location. I'm sure it has everything to do with the VPNs we connect through.
Try sometimes California reports Charlotte results. Windows was showing me the weather in Charlotte yesterday. I've also seen some obscure places I can't remember.
@OP+1g8bqr13
In office or remote, the IP info isn't always accurate. Multiple reasons why - security is just one of those. It's routed through different routers and hops. Sometimes CA reports NV search results, MN reports Chicago or NC results, NY reports Virginia results, and so on.
VPN typically encrypts and bounces traffic around for security, so your original location will be obscured.
The results you get will depend on the region of the VPN server your traffic is being routed to.
One time I loaded Google Maps inside the corporate LAN and it showed my current location as a residence in Lakeville, MN (far from where I was connected). I looked up the owner of the property, and sure enough they were an employee. Creepy af.