As an avid VPN user it’s infuriating that multilingual websites insist on using the client’s IP address to determine their language and country when web browsers have been sending the Accept-Language HTTP header since the mid-90s.

I understand that you can work out more or less where someone is located based on their IP address but it was never meant to be a geo-based marker. Why not go the simple route and use the header?

  • Chris@feddit.ukEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    I’m in England and my language is set to English, yet for some reason when I was browsing AliExpress a few weeks ago it was stuck in German and I couldn’t see how to change it. Go to the homepage - German. Click on a result from a search engine - German.

    I don’t know where it got that from, it wasn’t the IP either as from a computer on the same address it was fine.

    • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      AliExpress in particular is terrible with however they’re going about language selection. I have had this happen countless times and I don’t even travel or use a VPN. Like it’s based on a merchant you viewed or some other nonsense.