So I wanted to test the VPN today and asked for food near me and it was actually food near me instead of a city I set it to.
Is this thing working at all?!
Not enough information. I can only guess it’s using the location on your account. Or it might be using the location services on your phone.
Have you disabled HTML5 geolocation and/or GPS? If you previously went online without a VPN enabled, have you cleared any tracking cookies downloaded during that session?
Your IP address is only one way for Google to know your location.
Don’t forget about the mapping of your WiFi hotspot by Google as well as Microsoft, something people often fail to realize. Due to EU privacy requirements _optout_nomap suffixes were introduced.
there are SO many ways to ascertain your location, and using a VPN is just one small effort to address that. When connecting through a VPN, visit a site like https://www.whatismyip.com to see what your geo-targeting information is.
But, that’s only part of the way of identifying you. Familiarize yourself with digital fingerprinting by visiting https://amiunique.org
Also, as others have mentioned, you have left out so many key details of your situation. What device are you using? What browser? Are you logged into any online accounts? there are hundreds of ways to expose your location, and you’ve only addressed one of them.