Hi phimat,
We've recently been sending out emails asking people to update their details to ensure our records are correct. A link in the email sends you to a form where you can confirm your account details. The form is pre-filled with country based on geolocation of your IP address.
The code that calculates the geolocation wasn’t working properly! It had incorrect data ISO country codes and was getting confused when similarities popped up. For example "IR" = Ireland" and "Iran", “Austria” became “Australia”. About 1% or less of respondents seems to have been effected by this bug. And without you bringing it up, we wouldn't have noticed, so thanks for that!
We’re sorry for any inconvenience of confusion caused, but there was no malicious intent intended. If you're experiencing any other problems, please just PM me here on the forums and we'll look into those for you.
What a remarkably circuitous explanation! I assume you are referring to the emails that involved the US tracking setup? (Incidentally, a pretty nasty stunt, yes?) That was last April, so the error should have shown up back then.
A lot of time and energy no doubt has gone into dreaming up this excuse. Would be a lot more sensible to simply accept responsibility one way or the other and revert the location entry.
You know the saying about what to do if you find yourself in a hole...