Ask HN: Phone Behavior

[jrs235]

I have Google Fi and live in an area with spotty cell coverage. There are two locations that seem to exhibit the following behvaior on my phone: my phone (which is set to English) will suddenly switch to the Spanish sites in Chrome. Instead of resolving to the standard English Google site it will go to the Spanish site. Same with Yahoo and others. I'm not sure what the issue is or where the problem exists. I suspect the phone is connecting to a particular cell tower and somehow my session is getting mixed up with another phone? My service and signal strength is very weak in the area where this happens often downgrading from 5G to LTE. I am in an area with a large Spanish speaking population. Is this a phone issue, Google Fi issue, cell tower / service carrier (Google Fi uses a few carriers IIRC) issue? Anyone else experience something like this before? I'm trying to debug and figure out what's going on. If anyone has contacts at Google Fi, I'm willing to work with them if they care to also try to track down and resolve the issue. Thoughts? Anyone?

[solardev]

Can you use the Fi VPN and see if it maybe gives you a different IP to the website?

https://support.google.com/fi/answer/9040000?hl=en

[jrs235 → solardev]

Follow up: after enabling the VPN today, in the two locations I've had the issue arise a few days ago, it didn't today. I'll try to keep following up.

[solardev → jrs235]

Cool! Hope it helps.

[jrs235 → solardev]

I'll give it a try, thanks.

[throwaway019254]

Happens to me when my phone connects to a cell tower in Mexico. I get a Mexican IP address, and Google tries to accommodate.

[mac3n → throwaway019254]

doesn't actually have to be a Mexican IP. Just has to be in the database as Mexican. These databases can be pretty bad, as much as 10% wrong.

[jrs235 → mac3n]

Yeah I'm hundreds of miles away from Mexico. I wonder if enough Hispanics here connect thru the tower that I get assigned an IP previously tagged by one of them connecting thru the tower and then I get misattributed.

[pestatije]

how far are you from a spanish speaking country?

[jrs235 → pestatije]

Hundreds of miles. North Florida.