VPN, proxy, residential IP and Private Relay: which location checks each defeats

A VPN or proxy changes the IP address a server sees and defeats IP-based location entirely, while a residential-IP service defeats the anonymiser databases built to catch VPNs, and none of them move the device.

VPNs and proxies

A VPN or proxy sends traffic through a server somewhere else. The website sees the server’s address and, if it geolocates by IP, the server’s location. That is the purpose of the product, and most people who use one are not committing fraud.

Vendors that sell IP intelligence respond by keeping lists of addresses that belong to VPN providers, hosting companies and data centres, and flagging traffic from them.

Residential IPs

A residential-IP service routes traffic through ordinary home connections, often through software installed on consumer devices. To a website, the traffic comes from a household broadband address in the chosen city, which is exactly what genuine traffic looks like. Lists of data-centre addresses do not catch it.

GeoComply describes the trend on its own site:

Since 2022 we have seen a dramatic uptick in the number of VPNs using these IP addresses to target online services.

A customer reviewing GeoComply’s IP product, GeoGuard, on G2 made the same point about the whole category, in an otherwise five-star review:

As with all IP-based geofiltering solutions, they are vulnerable to the use of residential IP addresses to make illegitimate users appear legitimate.

iCloud Private Relay

Private Relay hides the user’s IP address from websites in Safari. It is not built to evade location checks. Apple says the relay address “accurately represents the client’s coarse city-level location by default” (Apple developer guidance), and users can choose a coarser setting. It makes IP location coarser but not wrong, and Apple publishes its relay address ranges.

What none of them do

None of these move the device. GPS, Wi-Fi scans, cellular signals and phone sensors read the same values with or without a VPN. Routing traffic elsewhere does not defeat a check that reads the device’s own sensors. That kind of check has other weaknesses, covered in device integrity checking.

Last reviewed 19 October 2026