[General Questions and Answers] Steersman:
I'm a United Kingdom citizen currently residing in Sweden, purchased a used Samsung Galaxy S9 from a friend for £350 in pristine condition, I was very happy with it until I noticed this annoyance.

Naturally I want to browse news from back home, so I use a VPN service that redirects all traffic through the UK, meaning every website or service believes I'm still back home, this has worked perfectly up until now.

This phone was purchased brand new in Sweden, never operator locked, once I was handed the phone it was factory reset, first time I turned it on I was met with "Let's Go!" text, set the language as English (UK) and time zone as London (GMT+0).

Before inserting my SIM card I wanted to test the phone out, so I connected the phone to my Laptop that then shared its VPN connection, proceeded to create a Samsung and Google account for the phone, when creating the Samsung Account it detected my location as United Kingdom and while creating the Google account it asked for a UK phone number (SMS verification).

But once I opened the Samsung Members app, all the text was in Swedish! I thought maybe the app can read the phones identification number (CSC) and figure out it was sold in Sweden, so it can restrict Samsung offers and Beta participation, that makes sense to me and I could let that slide, but then..

I try out every app the phone comes with after a factory reset, and a few more that the phone (Samsung/Google) recommended to me while it was updating apps, going through them nothing looked out of the ordinary except for one of the last things I opened: YouTube

The YouTube app no matter what I do, keeps recommending me Swedish videos to watch, on the hompage and on the trending section, when absolutely nothing on the phone or google account is set to Swedish (by default the YouTube app was set to United States).

I confirmed with Google Chrome on both my laptop (desktop) and phone (app), opening YouTube.com it recommends me UK videos instead of Swedish videos.

Anyone got a clue of what is going on? How could the YouTube (Google) app possibly detect that the phone is in Sweden and not the UK? I checked the CSC code and it's set to OXM NEE (Nordic Countries - Unbranded), so it's not even set to Sweden.

Summary,

Sold unbranded in Sweden (Not operator locked)

CSC is set to NEE (Nordic Countries)

Factory reset

Phone is currently in Sweden

No SIM card inserted (Phone is not connected to a mobile network, only emergency calls possible)

Language set to UK

Time Zone set to UK

IP Address set to UK (Wi-Fi)

Location never turned on (GPS)

Google Account detected and set as UK

Samsung Account detected and set as UK

YouTube app detected and set to US

Yet Samsung Members app shows everything in Swedish and the YouTube App still recommends Swedish videos. This to me sounds concerning and is annoying, these apps are doing things completely out of my control. The only thing I can think of is that both apps are somehow getting information from the cellular tower connection established for emergency purposes since there's no SIM card in the phone, and the CSC is set to generic Nordic Countries, not Sweden specifically which has a different CSC.