Why does Gmail claim Tor IPs are located in one country when blutmagie.de claims they are located in a different country?

Matthew pumpkin at cotse.net
Sun Aug 22 08:43:49 UTC 2010


  I go to http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/ and have a look at the exit
>> node "gigatux" called emohawk2.gigatux.com and located at
>> 78.129.201.189.
>>
>> This appears to be located in the UK according to blutmagie.de.
> whois and RIPE agree with blutmagie.  Gmail is wrong.  Perhaps they use
> different geoip databases.
>
> If you look at your circuits, are you exiting from the UK or do you
> have split circuits where some may be going to gstatic.com through
> another place?
>
I am not sure what "split circuits" are but I assume it is where multiple 
exit nodes are used to access the website.

In this case I was using "gigatux" with StrictExitNodes = 1 so AIUI all 
traffic is accessing Gmail (and therefore gstatic.com) via one node based 
in the UK.

---

I don't know if anyone else has experimented with using Gmail and Tor, but 
the majority of the time Gmail gives a totally different location to the 
real exit node location.

I would be interested to know why this might be.  I always check Gmail with 
StrictExitNode = 1.

I find it hard to understand why Gmail is consistently incorrect.  Perhaps 
the problem is with me - maybe the "split circuits" referred to above?

Thanks.
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