X’s new location labels unmask users. Insiders say the idea was rejected for years.

NBC News ^ | 11/25/2025 11:12 AM CST | David Ingram, Kevin Collier, Ben Goggin, Bruna Horvath

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Advocates for transparency on social media cheered this weekend when X, the app owned by tech billionaire Elon Musk, rolled out a new feature that disclosed what the company said were the country locations of accounts.

The feature appeared to unmask a number of accounts that were portraying themselves as belonging to Americans but in reality were based in countries such as India, Thailand and Bangladesh.

But by Monday, the effectiveness and accuracy of the feature were already in question, as security experts, social media researchers and two former X employees said the location information could be inaccurate or spoofed using widely available technology, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), to hide their locations.

The former employees said the idea had been pitched since at least 2018, but had been repeatedly shot down.

“Now that this feature exists, I think it’s absolutely going to be exploited, and people will learn to dodge it very quickly,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and a co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub.

The geolocation information began appearing over the weekend on X users’ accounts, where an “about” page displays the month and year users joined, where their accounts are purportedly based, whether they used country-specific app stores and potentially other details.

Previously, the only location information on accounts was what users had entered themselves, which the platform didn’t fact-check. On some accounts, that might be nothing at all or joke locations. X also doesn’t require accounts to use real names, so the new feature kicked off a wave of sleuthing.

It wasn’t immediately clear what data X was using to label accounts’ locations, but like many tech companies, X may have access to signals such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, phone numbers or devices’ GPS data...

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TOPICS: Computers/Internet
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[x]

You need a good VPN. I used to watch foreign TV, but apparently the foreign broadcasters know which IPs the VPN redirects to, so they blocked me.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

You need a good VPN. I used to watch foreign TV, but apparently the foreign broadcasters know which IPs the VPN redirects to, so they blocked me.

They all get identified after a while. They can determine that an IP address belongs to a VPN provider when they get thousands of requests per second coming from a single address. Then they block it.

[quantim]

A imperfect as it may be this will send a message to millions of punks around the world that they are being watched, for this I rejoice.

[conservaKate]

Boring, Oregon on the way to Damascas.

[roving]

If they are using a VPN it says in the profile, they are using a VPN.

[LowOiL]

VPN causes me two constant headaches.

1. If I want a shopping site to give me information about local stores (e.g., Home Depot), my VPN says I’m over in Seattle or Los Angeles and I get information about what’s in stock at those Home Depot stores.

2. Lots of graphics won’t display correctly if you are using a VPN. Pookie’s Toons often won’t load unless I turn the VPN off.

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3. Hard sometimes to get things like Youtube (and other Google-owned sites) to work now... between them blocking VPNs and hating on adblock program... They use the excuse of blocking bots or "for the children".

4. If you use a VPN for some games and you make the mistake of either turning it on one time or turning it off sometimes, they mark you as a suspecious user or even put you down as a bot account. Lost a Guild Wars (1) account doing that once (10 years of playing).

[LowOiL]

But you have to keep it up all the time I would imagine and things happen. Not sure what happens if you4 location changes.

Most decent paid VPNs have a feature that locks the internet down (called a "kill switch") if you lose connection to your VPN so you don't have leaks. It doesn't happen often (losing VPN connection), but when it does it is a pain for mine budget VPN because I have to restart my computer to re-up everything. Maybe once a month.

[bluemooncat]

That’s my understanding too. They know you’re on VPN. For example, if you’re out of country you can’t VPN Hulu to see the shows in your original country.

[bluemooncat]

They won’t know your country of origin, but they’ll know you’re on VPN.