My employer requires me to be physically located in the US when receiving calls as an interpreter, but I would like to do this job also outside of the country. If I used VPN to hide my location and pretend to be located in the US, would they be able to detect it? I was trying to find this information everywhere, but did not find a straightforward answer.
If you have a home in the US and are just traveling occasionally, you could run your own VPN server at home and always appear to be coming from there.
Not a fantastic idea if you like keeping your job (these things tend to come out eventually even if not because of your IP address), but it’s your life if you feel you can get away with it and that’s worth it to you.
Not knowing what industry you are in, it’s possible that requirement is part of some compliance mandate (federal, state, local, territorial or tribal) and by you not following it, put your organization at risk for sanctions or fines for non-compliance.
Edit: If you don’t know why it’s a requirement, why don’t you ask. Maybe it’s a loose requirement and they’ll work with you, or maybe it is a compliance thing and you’ll understand why you shouldn’t do it.
If they look the up IP address of where you’re connecting from it will likely say it’s from a data center and they can make reasonable assumptions based on this. Some VPN services provide a residential IP, but I don’t have any experience with them. You could also set up your a vpn service on your home computer so that you will use the same ip address as normal. But if your computer freezes or malfunctions while you are away there would be no way to fix it.
And if you are out of the country, there will be noticeable lag communicating back and forth anyway. So it really depends if you don’t mind if you lose this job and/or blacklisted from similar jobs.
I did this for 5 months, my job required me to be on call for the duration of my shift. I set up a VPN server at me home address using a raspberry pi, and purposely left my computer at home.
I logged in remotely using RDP (windows machine) and for all purposes, “I was working from home”… Sure, there is a slight delay in VoIP, but because the VoIP company is “big”, they had presence in east coast, west coast, and europe, so I was always getting the “closest” server to where I was.
Nobody noticed, since I was working through the computer “at home”
Is it worth risking your job over?
The only way you could be somewhat safe is if you are using your own computer, none of their proprietary software, and you’re VPN’ing to your home in the US, not just using a random provider.
If they control the computer then they can easily figure it out if they care to.
Could they? Yes, will they? No one can answer this, but the IT department of your job.
There are chances your employer may identify especially if you are trying to connect to the company’s network. Also, if you are using a VPN that doesn’t use a kill switch, any weak internet moment might disclose your location detail to your employer.
That, I suspect, would depend on how you are “receiving calls”. Most calling apps don’t reveal the IP addy of the caller.
Tbh, if you are using a better connection out of US, then using VPN will probably be better than your US speed 
If they can detect that? Yes, it is very risky, and I would use it as one time option or so, but not a viable option, especially to maintain a lie…
If you are getting calls are the VOIP I assume? If not just give them your mobile number who cares where you are as long as you have signal.
I dont know if it is your private computer or the companys. Anyway, we tested a product in our employes computers so we could see what they where doing and from where so we could see wich ssid they where using if they was connected by wifi, and that can maybe give them a hint of where you are.
If OP is going to do it, this is the best option.
This, most commercial VPNs are listed and easy to detect based on their allotted IP block. I ran my own VPN from home when I took a month long trip while filing for unemployment each week. Yes, I continued to look for work during that time. As an IT worker everything is done online.
This, they’ll see your IP address is from a data center.
But you could probably argue that you rub the vpn on your home connection without much issue. Just say it’s on the router level and they wouldn’t have a way to disprove you right?
Ya that’s my thought as well, RDP would be better for this. It’s exactly why credit card scammers use RDP, because it allows them to get around geo restrictions and it just looks like a normal pc.
Like the US Has literally every single biome you could ever want to explore except maybe tropical rainforest. Find a place in the USA and park it. Don’t risk your job for wanderlust.
The speed likely wouldn’t be an issue. The company requires that they be in the US, not at their home, so they could be connecting from a different location.
Still, it is risky.