Location Issue on my laptop with Windows 11

My experience is the opposite of yours. Again I’m not using any of edge’s secure networking features, the edge vpn is not on, I’m not blocking location information from any of the sites and it still thinks I’m in Boydton, VA.

Thanks for this Rob, I had great hopes that syncing the time would resolve my issue, but apparently not. I too am stuck in Boydton, VA. Some browser work, some do not. Chrome puts me in the correct location, but Firefox and Edge put me in Boydton, VA. When I first go to the maps page it is fairly close to my actual location, but as soon as I click the centre location button, and allow location access, off we go to Boydton. It doesn't matter if I'm using Google maps or Bing maps, the result is the same. Only Chrome shows the correct location.

Out of curiosity I checked my ip location in at least half a dozen location services and every one of them put me in the correct location, except Where am I now? - My current location in real time (whereiam.net), which put me in, you guessed it, Boydton, VA.

John

John,

You must have posted this while I was writing my last very long post, but I just decided to review the thread to see whether my recent idea explains at least most of the posts.

As I reviewed the posts, I began to have some thoughts relating to why there are still so many apparently flaky results that your own post brings into better focus. It does appear that at least some of these people's devices or apps sometimes work properly, so that implies that Microsoft must have either found a way to pass the location information through their Secure Network VPN tunnel (maybe IPv6?) or there's some other additional settings involved in aggravating the problems further.

The Maps location button is apparently performing a different type of request than the initial startup state of the same app, so it's likely whatever Microsoft has done to compensate works with one set of requests and not always with some others.

You may also notice that in my recent post I mentioned the flakier issues I had with that same Where am I now? app and the fact that at least it was apparently using some Google backend services, which was evident when I broke it by selecting to 'block' rather than 'allow' the location requests and caused it to display URLs that contained a strange Google result that appeared to be an error of some sort.

The reason the various browsers likely display differing results is that only Edge is directly affected by at least some of those Secure Network features, while others might have varying results based on how they route their network traffic, either through or around those VPN or similar secure tunnels. For example, Chrome is known to use their own location services I mentioned in an early post, which use items like your local Wi-Fi or others that don't require them to resolve the IP address issues that affect Microsoft, or any others depending on the results Windows itself supplies to the apps running on top of it.

So, to simplify my thought process in this post, I suspect that Microsoft is trying to actually fix the VPN server location problem I've been discussing here by somehow passing another seemingly valid network identifier such as an IPv6 address through their tunnel, bypassing the incorrect, but really accurate server address of Boydton, VA and displaying the location of the actual client system instead. It's this tunneling 'trick' that's apparently not working in all situations and thus still providing what to most people looks like inaccurate location information, when in fact it's the trick itself that's fooling the far-end servers you're attaching to into believing that the requests are really coming directly from the client machines themselves.

I haven't seen any technical explanation for this yet, but it may actually exist, I simply haven't been trying to look for it. Now that I realize that some explanation must exist, I'll look around some more to see if I can find it, though I'm not in a hurry since what I've discussed already is enough to explain the original issue behind what's causing these location problems.

Rob

I’m not using edge secure network features. They are turned off but I’m still having the issue.

I have my date/time settings to automatic is turned off. If I turn it on and sync, it tries to put me in the Eastern time zone, when in fact I am in the Central time zone.

Also the website Geolocalización por IP: descubre tu posición en tiempo real (whereiam.net), it shows this for my IP:

Latitude: 32.96369
Longitude: -96.74672

IP: <removed>
City: Richardson
Postal code: 75080
Service provider: null
Company: AT&T Corp.

That is correct for the IP info, but if I go to the "where am I right now tab" (Where I am right now - whereiam.net), it shows this:

My current location:

Street: Monroe Street, Boydton, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, 23917, United States

Latitude and longitudeLatitude: 36.6674 °
Longitude: -78.39 °

DMS Coordinates

Latitude: 36 40 2 N
Longitude: 78 23 24 W

I tried another one of those sites (MY IP LOCATION => Where am I based on my IP? (where-am-i.co)), and it shows similar information. For IP location:

For "My location" (MY LOCATION - Real-time locator (where-am-i.co))

Something is definitely up with Microsoft and this whole Boydton thing. Three people having Boydton as their geo-location (not IP location info) when they are no where no? Yea, that's a bug. Fix it Microsoft.

Yea, it is ridiculous. I've seen others post their location is also showing as Boydton, VA. Not a coincidence.

Also, I have IPv6 turned off and it still does this.

I have this same issue and it's super annoying. Edge, and the Maps app, in Windows 11, locates me in Boydton , VA, even though I'm in the Dallas, TX area. Chrome, however, does NOT have this issue, on the same system. Utterly ridiculous.

Chrome browser by Google has always used their own location services that include the Wi-Fi and other location data that they've spent decades developing, which aren't available to Microsoft who instead typically use the less precise and often less accurate IP addressing scheme.

There's nothing ridiculous about this at all, it's simply the fact that Google had evolved their location services based on their Android phones that now typically require GPS devices, and also their Google Maps picture database and the comparison mapping done whenever you set up a new phone, since this allows them complete access to your personal information including your Wi-Fi SSID among other data that Google collects about everyone.

Did you read my previous post above and take the time to check whether the Microsoft Account - Activity page indicates that your device is now connecting using IPv6 addresses rather than the older IPv4? If so, it's likely that this is the change that's actually occurred that is causing the inaccurate location information, since these new IPv6 addresses often haven't been used before and thus may not be accurate in the registration information that's the responsibility of your Internet ISP to maintain.

This is a classic problem when using PC type equipment that rarely contain GPS devices, though as I stated above, it's generally been fixed long ago for the older IPv4 addresses, since those were typically assigned decades ago and since there's far less of them, it was a smaller problem to solve as well.

The entire reason that IPv6 was created was to massively expand the number of IP addresses from the relatively small, legacy IPv4 address space of roughly 4 billion, to 1,028 times as many with IPv6. However, that obviously also increases the problem of inaccurate locations exponentially as well, which is simply part of what Microsoft knew would have to be improved by both Regional Internet Registries (RIR's) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) when they started to make the evolution to switch to the new addressing scheme on their own servers roughly a year or two ago.

Understanding IPv6 Geolocation: Challenges and Tools

Someone above asked about reverting to the old IPv4 addresses to solve this, but that's really not a good idea, since IPv6 will be the future. Instead, it's better if those of you having these issues first confirm that the addresses you're getting are either IPv4, for example something like 123.123.123.123, or instead the much longer IPv6 that looks like 3002:0bd6:0000:0000:0000:ee00:0033:6778.

If this recently changed, which you can easily see by looking back at previous login history on that same Microsoft Activity page, then go to either your ISP's Support forums or other offerings and look for others asking these same questions. If there aren't any, start a new thread there to ask whether they've properly set up the location information for the IPv6 addresses they assign to your routers or other devices within your home.

You'll also see in the article above that using things like a VPN or other similar routing issues can affect what the servers at the other end of a connection perceive as your location, so make sure you aren't using one of these before blaming the issue on anyone else including your ISP.

My assumption is that the recent Windows Updates that seem to have kicked this issue off for many PC users most likely included some improvements to the IPv6 support for the networking components in your device, resulting in your own device acquiring an IPv6 address that as long as all of the other devices (routers and switches) on the Internet between you and the Microsoft servers support IPv6 as well, will result in the initial attempt to connect using IPv6. Since most of these major Internet devices have supported IPv6 for over a decade, it's often only the client devices at home that needed an updated driver for this to work.

Rob

Take a look in the Recent Activity page in the Security section of your Microsoft account to see which type of IP address is being used to identify your login location for each device.

My bet is that since Microsoft had enabled the ability for their servers to support the newer IPv6 addressing sometime last year, that more and more individual computers, especially those supporting the newer drivers and technologies provided with Windows 11, are likely ending up with IPv6 addresses, leading to those being used by devices for the first time in many cases.

What this means is that though the old IPv4 addresses have been around forever and the locations associated with them have been adjusted at least to some extent long ago, in many cases the new IPv6 addresses have been used far less often and so in some cases may not yet contain valid location information.

Since that information is the responsibly of both Regional Internet Registries and for the morre3 detailed location information, the Internet Service Providers, this isn't something that Microsoft itself has any control over. Though people have become accustomed to quite accurate information relating to their personal smartphones, they forget that these actually contain a geolocation device using the GPS satellite location services, while at worst they can typically be roughly located using the cell phone tower(s) they're using, while the typically PC or tablet doesn't usually have these abilities and is more often located using its IP address.

Here's an article discussing these issues relating to IPv6 and Geolocation.

Understanding IPv6 Geolocation: Challenges and Tools

So if you determine your device is being attached to Microsoft servers using IPv6, it's most likely IPv6 involved and even if this isn't true, it's still highly likely it's your ISP or other network provider that's responsible for the inaccurate location information, since that's not something that Microsoft would handle other than for its own server or other internet facing network locations it's directly responsible for.

Rob