About this account on X (Twitter): the country, VPNs, how to see it

Tap or click the "Joined" date on a profile, the line with the month and year the account was created. X's help sends you there the same way, "by clicking the ‘joined’ date in your profile".

On x.com, it opens a page of its own, at the profile's address followed by /about, and X asks you to log in first. For the apps, Nikita Bier, then X's head of product, wrote when announcing the panel in November 2025 that it "will be accessible by tapping the signup date on profiles".

The panel starts with the account's picture, name and @username. Then come rows, each only when X has something to put in it. In X's web app, in this order:

• "Date joined": the month and year the account was created.
• "Account based in": a country or, if the owner chose it, a region.
• "Verified", with "Since" and a date, and "ID Verified", for accounts that have them.
• "An affiliate of" another account, for accounts an organization has affiliated with itself.
• How many times the account changed its username, with "Last on" and the month of the latest change. It isn't when the account was last on X, which X shows no one: how to spot inactive followers.
• "Connected via": in the examples seen so far, a country's app store or app, such as "United States App Store" or "Iran Android App".

The panel's dates, like the profile's, show only the month and year.

From IP addresses. X's help says the country or region "is inferred only by your aggregated IP addresses". It isn't the location people type on their profile, or the country in your account settings: the same page treats all three as different things, and calls your country setting "non-public information".

So it can be wrong, and X has said so. In November 2025, NBC News saw X's note on the country pop up when a location was clicked: "The country or region that an account is based can be impacted by recent travel or temporary relocation. This data may not be accurate and can change periodically."

That's what NBC News found on its own staff. Three of its journalists' accounts showed "where they had traveled to within the last several months", not where they're based.

"Connected via" is a different row, and X hasn't defined it: "So far, X has not provided a definition of the terms," NPR wrote. It found a self-described journalist in Gaza whose account was "Connected via" an app in the U.K., which "may mean various things, including that the account was registered in the U.K."

The panel's first days showed those limits:

It may, X says, and X may then flag the country. Nothing X has published says a VPN hides it.

When one of X's partners flags a proxy on your account, your "About your account" settings page tells you: "One of our partners has indicated that you may be connecting via a proxy — such as a VPN — which may change the country or region that is displayed on your profile. Your profile will display “Country or region may not be accurate” to other users."

You can be flagged without a VPN. The note other people saw on flagged profiles, as NBC News quoted it in November 2025, ends: "This data may not be accurate. Some internet providers may use proxies automatically without action by the user."

And corrections aren't instant. Bier wrote at launch that incorrect data "will be updated periodically based on best available information. This happens on a delayed and randomized schedule to preserve privacy."

No. X has no setting that turns the panel off or hides the country. Open Settings > Privacy and safety > About your account, or, as X's help says, click the "joined" date on your own profile, then the settings gear. There are two choices:

A region is broader than a country: NPR saw an account "based in Eastern Europe (Non-EU)".

Two kinds of accounts are different:

• Some business accounts get a list of countries to pick from, under "Business Settings": "Business accounts managed from multiple countries can configure their profile’s location below."
• Government accounts with a grey checkmark show no location. "We do not show location on any gray check accounts to prevent acts of terrorism against government leaders," Bier wrote in November 2025.

If your country is wrong, X's help links to a report form, which asks you to log in to that account first.

As for who sees your panel, X's help says only that it "is publicly available if your account is set to public". It says nothing about protected accounts.

Nothing from this panel. We don't read it, we keep no country, profile location or join date for any X account, and your dashboard shows none. We use an account's age, read from its ID, only to work out the earliest day someone could have followed you: when someone followed you.

What we track is who leaves, and how: your list of unfollowers tells unfollows apart from suspended and deleted accounts. If you're wondering whether new followers are real, how to spot fake followers has what gives bots away.