Why does my proxy still show my real IP?

I use proxies when I need websites to see me from a different location, and most of the time everything looks fine. But I’ve noticed that some sites still manage to pick up my real IP or at least the city where I actually am, even though the proxy itself is working. I tried a few different providers and got the same thing more than once, so now I’m not sure the proxy is even the problem. Why does this happen?

I’d stop judging the proxy only by whether the IP changes on the first checker you open. Try the same connection in another browser profile and compare what different sites actually see, because sometimes the problem follows the browser rather than the proxy itself. That should at least narrow down whether you’re dealing with a bad proxy or something happening on your side.

A proxy can look perfectly fine at first and still leave other pieces of your real connection exposed in the background. That’s why switching providers over and over doesn’t always solve the problem, even when the replacement IP itself is different. You can, for example, read what an IP leak is here: https://gologin.com/blog/what-is-an-ip-leak/ . It explains how a real IP can still get exposed while you’re using a proxy and what usually causes that to happen. The article also shows what to check when the proxy appears to work but websites still manage to identify the original connection.