An unwanted update to your Google Account

by Rob O'Leary on 01 May 2021

I got an email from Google today with the title “An update to your Google Account”. The gist of the email is that Google wants to change the country associated with my account, presumably based on recently recorded IP addresses associated with my account.

It specifically said the following:

We associate your Google Account with a country (or region) so that we can better provide our services to you. This association is used to determine two things:

The Google company that provides the services, processes your information and is responsible for complying with applicable privacy laws

The version of the Terms of Service that governs our relationship, which can vary depending on local laws.

Your country association will change within 30 days:

from Germany
to Malaysia

Bear in mind that Google services are essentially the same, regardless of your country association. Also, any purchased content and banking information that you might have in your Google Account will remain the same.

I love to travel and do it a lot. I would never want this done automatically for me. This has never happened before, so it must be a recent policy change.

Further in the email, it gives an indication of how you can request to correct your associated country:

If the country associated with your account doesn’t match your country of residence…You can find more information about your country association, and a way to request a change if you think that it’s wrong, by reviewing the Google Terms of Service.

The Terms of Service actually say nothing at all about country association!

After some searching, I found how to make a Country Association Inquiry (sign in required to complete). It’s just a short form where you pick your country and give a reason why this is a mistake. When you submit the form, it says something like “We’ll get back to you by email within a few weeks.”

Did Google change my country association to the correct country?

This is debatable!

Google changed my country association from Germany to Malaysia. Their response to my initial Country Association Inquiry was:

You recently sent us a request to change the country associated with your Google Account. After reviewing your account, we think your current country association is accurate and we didn’t change anything.

Your country:Malaysia

You can see the country associated with your account by looking at Google’s Terms of Service.

I was living in Germany. I went travelling before the covid pandemic. When the pandemic happened, I was stranded in Malaysia. I was physically in Malaysia when I made the request. With the many issues associated with travelling at that time, I reluctantly stayed in Malaysia longer. It was unpleasant to be told by a business which country I was (residing) in, especially because extraordinary circumstances prevented me from residing at “home”.

When I returned to Europe a few months later, I made another request and I got the same response.

I made a third request a few weeks after the second request, and they switched the association back to Germany. I was physically in Germany during this time.

You may think that Google was right in my particular case because of my physical location. This is not the key point to me. I don’t want Google to change my country association back and forth when I travel to other countries. Automating the assessment of your (digital) country of residence is likely to be error-prone for this and a number of reasons. What I wanted to do is to understand the process to make more informed decisions around using Google services in the future. What is the criteria for changing your country association?

Google does not provide this information. There isn’t an option given to reach out to a person for an explanation or assistance. This is intentional.

Google left my country of association as Germany until November 2025. Then, they incorrectly changed my country association to Colombia, a country that I had visited a few months prior.

Taking a step back, is this type of digital jurisdiction even necessary? Google tracks you regardless of your country. Ironically compliance to regional privacy laws is one of the reasons used as a justification for tracking you! Should they be doing this?

Does Google get the association of country wrong?

Yes.

I cross-posted this article to dev.to on May 1st 2021, and Daniel Schroeder reported that he got the same email from Google about changing his country association. He has been physically in Germany for the preceding 2 years. He said:

I got the same Mail. They want to move my account from Germany to Thailand. I’ve not been to Thailand (or anywhere else) since 2 years…

I have recieved some emails from people on this subject since I first published this article. On the 15th of September 2025, someone informed me that they were incorrectly assessed in a similar way to Daniel. They do not use a VPN and they did not move to another country. That person did not know why Google thought they were in a different country. The only thing that they thought it could have been was a client app that was granted access to their Google account. Perhaps the client app issued requests from a server in another country consistently.

Google changed my country association to Colombia in November 2025. I was not in Colombia at this time and I do not live there. I had visited Colombia a few months prior to the change.

You can look through this reddit thread to hear about more examples.

Final thoughts

Google has automated the assessment of the country of residence for Google accounts. Google says that it does this to apply the appropriate privacy laws and Terms of Service according to where you live. They track you to make that assessment on your behalf.

As I covered in this article, Google is making incorrect assessments about the country of residence of their users regularly. It is an error-prone process. In my opinion, if it is important enough for Google to know your country of residence, they should get it right consistently.

The process of automatically switching your country is blunt. Google plainly informs people via email that they are changing your account’s country within 30 days. The information on this subject is sparse. Initially, they did not give a clear means to dispute the change. To me that feels like a guerrilla operation!

I have my doubts that Google are being good stewards here. If Google is sincere about applying country-specific laws, they should be clear and transparent about the topic, and they should ensure the dispute process is simple and efficient.

In this article, I am only sharing my experience and impressions. Please, do your own research, and make your own conclusions.