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?

  • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.chOP
    5·
    3 days ago

    Is user consent needed for the Accept-Language header? That would be kind of insane. I realize that it could be considered identifiable but that still feels strange to me.

    I’m thinking mostly of localization, primarily language.

    • Scott@sh.itjust.works
      English
      1·
      3 days ago

      Localizations are used to convert between different languages. Just having a country code inside a header doesn’t give enough context where you are. For example states/provinces and their respective cities. Most of that is easily collected from the GeoIP information to give you local results for your area.

      Edit: here’s an example of one of the bigger GeoIP APIs that provides the data so you can see the example for your own IP

      https://ipgeolocation.io/what-is-my-ip/