Apple time and location

[IJWS15]

We checked into a hotel in France a couple of hours ago and both my wife’s iPad and my iPad seem to think they are in Beijing and time was initially counting from 0000. Setting time to manual and Paris gives us the right time but resetting to auto and it goes back.

Our iPhones are not affected!

Any ideas?

[KennyN]

Have you connected to the hotel Wi-Fi? If so, they may have a Chinese router?

[IJWS15]

Maybe but just connected my iPhone to the WiFi and it still has the correct time/timezone.

[KennyN]

Strange, the only other thing that comes to mind would be if you are using a VPN that may be causing some confusion.

[IJWS15]

Google maps shows the device is in China. Hotel have no idea and no access to reset the WiFi server.

[IJWS15]

No VPN

[butchstewie]

If it only does it on hotel wifi it sounds like their public IP address is in some geo-location database as China.

Nothing sinister.

Hopefully

[KennyN]

As first suspected, a Chinese router reporting back to the Motherland

[IJWS15]

Oddly just tried an old iPad (carried because it has a game app on it which is no longer available) and it is not affected. It thinks, correctly, that it is in Doubs.

Hotel is one of the Accor chain.

[IJWS15]

iPads are all WiFi only.

[IJWS15]

Normal service restored this morning using hotel WiFi. Don’t appear to be any lingering issues !