How can Google retrieve my real IP address?

VPN
1

If I visit https://myaccount.google.com/device-activity, Google somehow is able to find my real IP address.

I have been running a VPN on my router for a few years, so I thought the IP address of the VPN server would be shown.

It doesn’t help if I clear all my activity and sign out from all Google accounts, then reboot the router so I’m assigned a new IP address from my ISP and making sure the VPN is running. Not even if use double VPN, both on my computer and the VPN on the router. Google is still able to retrieve the (new) real IP assigned from my ISP.

I’m using Windows 10, I haven’t tried the same on my Linux machine yet.

2

Your VPN is leaking. In the past I’ve used firewall rules to block non-vpn traffic. searching for “how to stop vpn IP leaks” or similar will get you on the right path.

3

I have had the same problem. I even asked it on r/privacy but got no working answers. I even had DNS leak protection from my VPN client, I turned off WebGL, WebRTC and every conceivable way Google could know my real IP but they still seemed to get it.

But after much tinkering around, I was able to prevent this leak by changing several privacy settings from about:config.
To change these settings, Enter “about:config” on the address box on Mozilla Firefox, and search for these settings, and change their values as shown below.

privacy.trackingprotection.cryptomining.enabled = true

privacy.resistFingerprinting = true

privacy.firstparty.isolate = true

privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = true

browser.send_pings = false

dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled = false

webgl.disabled = true

beacon.enabled = false

browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.enabled = false

Here is the source for where I got all these settings from : www.privacytools.io/browsers
I do not know which specific setting is responsible for the IP leak, since I have not bothered to test each one of them individually, but I know when applied collectively, these set of settings do seem to block google from getting the real IP.

Unfortunately, I do not know of a way to make this work for Chromium based browsers like Google Chrome. As of now, this only works on Gecko browsers like Tor, Firefox, Fennec for android etc.

Try this and let me know the results :slight_smile:

4

Go to settings on your Android, locate VPN settings and select the “always on VPN” switch it should automatically turn on the “block connections without VPN” switch below it

Settings > connections > VPN > always on VPN switch

For Windows PC you’ll need to modify firewall rules most VPNs on PC won’t tunnel windows store apps and they’re known to leak alot

5

do a test on https://ipleak.net/

make sure your network traffic is always going through the vpn.

maybe upgrade to a better vpn if you cant fix it.

6

Thank you, that seemed to fix it!

I have now removed Chrome altogether and using Firefox instead. And Edge when I want to translate pages in foreign languages on the fly.

7

How do I do this on windows PC? Can you please elaborate? I’ve been trying to do this. I do not use any UWP apps. I have uninstalled windows store altogether.

8

In your opinion which is the best vpn?

9

https://ipleak.net/ is an awesome suggestion!