Hiding "from <country>" from the profile

[rubert]

I tried to find out how I could remove or hide the country from the profile as it is visible even to unregistered users when they hover over the username in a thread for example. But none of the forum settings (account details, privacy etc) seem to have options to hide or remove the country. To be honest, I don't ever remember putting the country information to the forum profile though obviously I am not entirely sure as this account is pretty old.

Any ideas how I could either the hide or remove the country from the profile?

 

[HFY]

Hmm, I don't see a location on my exterior profile.

Does my profile show my location to you?

If not then I can share what I did to my settings until we stumble onto the cause.

 

[rubert]

Yeah, your profile does not show the location either while logged in or not logged in.

 

[HFY]

Yeah, your profile does not show the location either while logged in or not logged in.

Okay cool. Here's another one I found which has no listed location: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/members/mial42.1566284/

Don't see many similarities between his profile and my own -- e.g. his is public, mine is private, both have no location.

In that case, my first suggestion is to try using a VPN. I'm on one myself at the moment (a cheap one which I hope will confound advertising tracker-bots), and it might be that the VPN's servers negate whatever GeoIP database is doing the forum mapping.

 

[rubert]

Using VPN is not a solution to that and I don't have access to any trusuted VPN at the moment which would allow me to test that.

 

[HFY]

Okay, VPN is my best guess, second best would be something under Privacy (but not sure what). Here are my settings:




EDIT: Actually let me just turn off my VPN for a while and let's see if my country appears.

 

[rubert]

That was my assumption as well but unfortunately none of the privacy settings seem to have any effect regarding the country part. Thanks for suggestions, hopefully somebody from PDX working on forums can shed light at some point.

 

[HFY]

Just turned my VPN off, and refreshed the page.

Not sure if the forum's GeoIP thingy picked up on that change, so let's see if it sinks in after a while. I'll turn it back on tomorrow.

 

[rubert]

Out of curiosity, have bought something from Paradox's own store? I know the payment settings there have recorded my country information but it really shouldn't spread to the forum profile.

 

[HFY]

Out of curiosity, have bought something from Paradox's own store? I know the payment settings there have recorded my country information but it really shouldn't spread to the forum profile.

Yes, recently I bought something at their PDX store sale event, and then later I bought a gift via Steam.

 

[HFY]

When I check my "Connected Accounts", my Steam account is connected, and my country is visible there:



So they have some data for me, they're just not showing it.




EDIT: as of the last edit time, I remain a man without a country, even though my VPN has been turned off until now:

 

[HFY]

... and as of today I am still without country.

Hmm.

Let me try something else.

EDIT: Changing my preferences & settings while the VPN is off (i.e. by naked IP) has not given me a country.

 

[rubert]

I would have been very surprised if it had been VPN hiding the country. Kind of weird issue. Small but IMO it really should be looked into especially since the country is now visible even to the unregistered users.

 

[HFY]

I would have been very surprised if it had been VPN hiding the country. Kind of weird issue. Small but IMO it really should be looked into especially since the country is now visible even to the unregistered users.

GeoIP and "location services" have become quite popular in recent years.

VPN is still my guess, it's just that we might not see any effect after turning it off since all my previous IPs -- with their distant geo-locations -- are still in the forum DB.

So, if you can, my suggestion is to get a VPN on one of your devices, and log into the forum from that device. Give you account more associated IP addresses in more geo-locations such that the forum's GeoIP module gives up. I think that's what happened in my case, and why turning the VPN off for a day has not changed anything.