The tunnel is usually fine - something other than your address is reporting your location. The usual culprits: a location permission the browser or app is reading from the device, a session cached before you connected, an account whose own country outranks your address, split tunnelling leaving the browser outside, DNS-based region detection, or a stale record for the server's address.
Few things are more irritating than a client showing "Connected - Germany" while every site you open still greets you in your own language. It reads as a broken VPN. It almost never is one. Something closer to the browser, or to the site itself, is answering the location question before your address gets a say.
Six causes, genuinely ordered from the most common to the least, each with what to change. Work down the list and stop when the symptom goes.
Start Here: Has Your Address Actually Changed?
Everything below depends on the answer, so take the reading first. With the VPN connected, open the MyIPShow homepage and look at the address and the provider name. If both are the VPN's - a hosting company rather than your ISP - the tunnel is doing its job and the problem is downstream, which is what the rest of this page is about. The IP Lookup tool does the same for an address you paste in, and the VPN Checker says whether what you are presenting reads as a VPN at all.
If the address still shows your own provider, none of the causes below apply - the tunnel is not carrying your traffic, which is a more basic fault and belongs to how to check if your VPN is actually working.
One expectation to set before the list. The location a site shows you comes from a database's estimate of where the server's address sits, and city-level estimates are routinely off by a good distance even when nothing is wrong - what is my IP location covers how far. Right country and wrong city is normal, not a fault.
One reading decides which half of the problem you have.
Cause 1: The Browser Is Reading Your Device, Not Your Address
This is the one, more often than all the others together. Your address is one way to guess where somebody is. A location permission is a far better one, and sites ask for it because it is far better. Once you have granted it, the browser hands over a position worked out from GPS, nearby Wi-Fi networks and the phone's radio - none of which your VPN touches, because none of it travels through the tunnel as an address.
So the site is not ignoring your VPN. It is using a more accurate source that you gave it permission to use, and your real position wins because it is not a guess at all.
What to change. Revoke location for that site, then reload. In Chrome and Edge it is the icon at the left of the address bar, then Site settings, then Location set to Block. In Firefox, the same icon, then Clear permission. In Safari on a Mac it is Settings for this website. On Android and iOS there is a second layer above the browser: the operating system's own location permission for the browser app, and turning it off there covers every site at once. Apps are simpler and stricter - a mobile app with location permission will keep reporting your real position no matter what your VPN does, and the only fix is removing the permission in system settings.
Worth knowing which sites this actually explains. Maps, weather, delivery and store locators ask for the permission by design, so they are the ones where a VPN appears to do nothing. A site that only reads your address - most news, shopping and streaming pages - cannot use this route unless you have granted it.
Cause 2: The Site Decided Where You Are Before You Connected
Region detection is expensive to repeat, so sites do it once and store the answer. That answer lives in a cookie, in local storage, or in a session the server is holding open for you - and it was written while you were on your ordinary connection. Reconnecting through a VPN does not reach back and rewrite it. The page keeps serving the country it already wrote down, sometimes for weeks.
The giveaway is a site that redirects you to a regional address, such as a domain ending in your own country code, or one that shows prices in your own currency while a lookup clearly shows a foreign address. The redirect happened once and is now being remembered.
What to change. Connect the VPN first, then clear that site's cookies and site data, then open it again. Order matters: clearing first and connecting afterwards just writes the same stale answer back. A private or incognito window is the quick test, because it starts with no stored data at all - if the site shows the VPN's region there and your own region in your normal window, stored data is your answer and you have just proved it in about ten seconds.
Two things a private window does not clear. A logged-in session, which is Cause 3. And your device's own regional settings, which some sites read from the browser rather than from the network: language, currency format and timezone. A timezone that says one country while your address says another is also a mismatch that fraud systems look for, so it is worth matching the timezone to the server's region if you need the location to be believed rather than merely present.
Cause 3: The Account Has Its Own Country, and It Outranks Your Address
The cause almost nobody mentions, and on streaming services and app stores it is usually the real one. When you are signed in, many services stop asking the network where you are and read the country attached to the account - set when you registered, and often tied to the payment method or billing address on file. Your address becomes irrelevant, because the account has already answered the question with something it trusts more.
This is why a VPN can put you convincingly in another country and the catalogue, store front, tax or available payment options do not budge. Nothing is leaking. The service is reading a field in your profile.
What to change. Sign out and reload, and see whether the region follows the address - if it does, the account was the source. Beyond that there is often nothing to change, because changing an account's country usually requires a payment method registered in the new country, and plenty of services deliberately allow it only once in a period, or not at all. Signing out is a diagnosis rather than a fix here, and knowing that saves you from hunting for a leak that does not exist.
Cause 4: Something Is Outside the Tunnel
Two versions of the same problem, and both produce the same symptom: the client is connected, the tunnel is genuinely working, and the program you are looking at is simply not inside it.
Split tunnelling is a feature that routes chosen apps through the VPN and leaves the rest on your normal connection. It is useful, it is easy to switch on and forget, and some clients ship with a default list. If your browser is on the excluded side, every page you open reports your real address while the client shows a perfectly healthy connection - and a lookup run in that browser will show your own provider, which makes this one easy to confirm.
A browser extension is the other version. Most VPN extensions are not VPNs at all: they are proxies for that one browser. Everything else on the device, including a second browser, goes out normally. If you installed the extension and never ran the desktop client, that is the whole explanation.
What to change. Turn split tunnelling off entirely while you test, rather than adding your browser to the list, so you are testing one thing. Use the desktop or mobile client rather than the extension. Then take the reading again on the homepage in the browser you actually care about - not in the client's own status panel, which reports the tunnel and not the browser.
Cause 5: The Site Is Reading Your DNS, Not Your Address
A DNS leak means your device is still asking your ISP's resolver to look up domain names, even though the traffic that follows goes through the tunnel. That is a privacy problem in its own right, and it also has a location side effect that surprises people.
Large services and the content networks in front of them can see which resolver asked for a name, and some use that as a region signal - partly because it tells them which nearby server to send you to. A resolver sitting in your real country, alongside an address in another, is a contradiction, and a service that is deliberately checking for region tricks can treat the resolver as the more honest of the two.
What to change. Turn on the VPN client's own DNS leak protection, which is not always enabled by default, or set the client to use its provider's resolvers rather than whatever your network handed you. If you have manually configured a public resolver on the adapter or the router, that setting can survive the connection and is worth undoing while you test. Then test it properly - a leak test has to be a hosted one, because it works by getting your device to look up unique hostnames and reporting which resolvers came asking. The step-by-step version is in how to check if your VPN is actually working, which covers this leak and the two others alongside it.
Cause 6: The Server's Address Is Recorded in the Wrong Place
The last one is not on your device at all. There is no authoritative registry of where an address physically is. Every site that shows you a city is reading a commercial database, and that database is an inference built from routing data, registration records and network measurements. When a VPN provider brings a new range into service, or moves one between countries, the databases catch up at their own pace - and not all at once, which is why two sites can disagree about the same server on the same afternoon.
So a Netherlands server can be recorded as German for a while, or a range can be listed under the operator's registered head office rather than the rack it actually sits in. The vendors themselves publish country-level accuracy in the high nineties rather than at one hundred per cent, and city-level figures well below that. Your own reading is right, the tunnel is right, and one database happens to be wrong about the far end.
What to change. Pick a different server, ideally in a different city in the same country, and read the address again - a wrong record usually belongs to one range rather than to the whole provider. If a single site is the only one disagreeing, it is that site's data supplier and there is nothing on your end to fix.
What Should You Try First?
Ordered by how fast each one is to run rather than by the list above, so you can rule out the most ground in the least time.
- Open the site in a private window, VPN already connected. Thirty seconds, and it splits the problem in half. Correct region there and your own region in the normal window means stored data or a logged-in session, and you can stop reading at Cause 3.
- Revoke the site's location permission and reload. On a phone, check the operating system's location permission for the browser as well, because the browser setting sits underneath it.
- Disconnect, quit the client completely, reconnect to a different city. This clears a half-established tunnel and moves you off a single mislabelled range in one action.
- Turn split tunnelling off, and use the desktop client rather than the browser extension. Then take the reading in the browser you actually use, not in the client's status panel.
- Sign out of the service and reload. If the region follows your address once you are signed out, the account's own country was answering all along.
If all five change nothing and your address is clearly the VPN's, you are looking at either a database record you cannot influence or a site that has recognised the address as a VPN and is refusing it deliberately. The Proxy Check tool tells you which, because it reads whether the address you are on sits in one of the catalogued hosting ranges those services block. Switching to a less crowded server usually settles it.
What Is Almost Certainly Not the Cause?
Two things that come up constantly in forum answers and are worth ruling out so you do not spend an evening on them.
WebRTC. It gets named for every VPN problem, and the classic leak is largely closed: the major browsers replace local addresses with a generated hostname by default, precisely because of this. More to the point, a WebRTC leak exposes an address to a script that goes looking for one - it is not what decides the language or currency of an ordinary page. It is worth testing as a privacy matter, on the VPN verification guide, but it is not the answer to this question.
And a wrong city. If the country is right and the city is off by fifty or five hundred kilometres, nothing is broken. That is the normal accuracy of address-based location, not a symptom, and chasing it leads nowhere.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my VPN say connected but my location has not changed?
In most cases the tunnel is working and something else is reporting your position. A location permission you granted the site, a session or cookie written before you connected, the country attached to your account, split tunnelling leaving the browser outside the tunnel, a DNS leak, or a stale database record for the server's address. Read your public address first to see which half of the problem you have.
Can a website see my real location even with a VPN on?
Yes, if you have granted it location permission. That permission returns a position worked out from GPS, nearby Wi-Fi and the phone's radio, none of which travels through the tunnel, so it is both more accurate than your address and unaffected by the VPN. Revoking the permission for that site removes the route.
Why does a streaming service still show my home country?
Usually because you are signed in and the service is reading the country attached to the account rather than asking the network. That field is set at registration and is often tied to the payment method on file, so your address never enters the decision. Signing out and reloading tells you whether the account was the source.
My VPN shows the right country but the wrong city. Is something broken?
No. City-level location is an estimate drawn from a commercial database, and being off by a long distance is ordinary even when everything is working. Ranges are also sometimes recorded under the operator's registered office rather than the building the servers sit in. Right country and wrong city is the expected result, not a fault.
Does clearing cookies actually fix a wrong region?
It fixes the version of the problem caused by stored data, but only if you connect the VPN first and clear afterwards. Clearing while you are on your ordinary connection just lets the site write the same regional answer back on the next visit. A private window with the VPN already connected is the faster test, because it starts with nothing stored.
Will a different server in the same country change anything?
Often, yes. Geolocation records belong to individual address ranges rather than to a provider as a whole, so one server can be recorded in the wrong country while its neighbours are correct. Busy ranges are also the ones most likely to be catalogued and refused by streaming services, so moving to a quieter server helps with both problems at once.
Final words. The instinct when a VPN appears not to work is to blame the VPN, and that instinct is wrong most of the time. Take one reading of your public address, and the question splits cleanly: your own provider means the tunnel, the VPN's address means the browser, the account or the site. Almost everything on this page lives on that second side. You can take that reading in a few seconds on the MyIPShow homepage.