Persistent Inconsistencies in IP-Based Geo-Targeting Accuracy with VPN/Proxy Detection, seeking advanced mitigation strategies

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Daniel Ramirez Author
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11 hours ago Asked
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we've been tackling standard geolocation API issues for a while now, but a more insidious problem persists regarding actual geo-targeting accuracy, especially for critical geo-restricted features. it's really starting to impact our user experience and compliance big time.

even with robust VPN/proxy detection layers in place, we're seeing a high rate of location misidentification. users whose IPs should clearly resolve to, say, Country A are often flagged as Country B, or even worse, as an unknown proxy, despite using legitmate residential IPs. this isn't just a slight deviation; it's often a complete miss and it's killing our location data accuracy.

this manifestation isn't subtle. here's a dummy console log snippet to illustrate the kind of discrepancies and proxy flags we're getting:

[2023-10-27 14:35:01] INFO: Processing IP: 192.168.1.100 (User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0...)
[2023-10-27 14:35:01] DEBUG: IP Lookup Result (API_A): { "ip": "192.168.1.100", "country_code": "US", "is_proxy": false }
[2023-10-27 14:35:01] DEBUG: IP Lookup Result (API_B): { "ip": "192.168.1.100", "country_code": "CA", "is_proxy": false }
[2023-10-27 14:35:02] WARN: Geo-targeting mismatch detected for 192.168.1.100. Expected: US, Reported: CA.
[2023-10-27 14:35:02] INFO: Processing IP: 203.0.113.5 (User-Agent: Chrome/118.0...)
[2023-10-27 14:35:02] DEBUG: IP Lookup Result (API_A): { "ip": "203.0.113.5", "country_code": "DE", "is_proxy": true, "proxy_type": "residential VPN" }
[2023-10-27 14:35:02] DEBUG: IP Lookup Result (API_B): { "ip": "203.0.113.5", "country_code": "DE", "is_proxy": false }
[2023-10-27 14:35:03] ERROR: Proxy/VPN flag inconsistency for 203.0.113.5. API_A: true, API_B: false. Geo: DE. Blocking access.

beyond typical IP blocklists and commercial proxy databases, what advanced, perhaps less common, techniques or data points are fellow developers using to significantly improve geo-targeting accuracy and reduce false positives for legitmate users while still catching actual VPNs/proxies? we really need to nail this location data accuracy. help a brother out please...

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