Definition
Geo-spoofing is any technique that misrepresents your geographic location to an online service. A VPN is by far the most common method: by connecting to a server in another country, your IP address appears to be there, and most location-detection systems rely primarily on IP. Other geo-spoofing methods include falsifying GPS coordinates on a phone, providing a fake address in a profile, and using a Smart DNS service that selectively routes only the traffic that performs geolocation checks.
Why People Do It
Common motivations: accessing content licensed only for other countries (Netflix US from Europe, BBC iPlayer from outside the UK, regional news from a censored country); buying products at favourable regional prices (software, video games, flights, hotels); using services not yet available in your country; bypassing political censorship; testing how a website appears to users in different markets.
Limits
IP-based geo-spoofing is the easiest to do but also the easiest to detect. Many services now cross-check the IP location against payment-method country, GPS, app-store country, and language settings. A consistent geo-spoofing setup must address all of these, not just the IP. For streaming, the practical bar is whatever level of mismatch the service tolerates — and that is constantly shifting. Using a VPN to reach another country's catalogue usually breaks the streaming service's terms of use, even where it is not illegal. In the EU, the Portability Regulation (EU) 2017/1128 already lets you use your home subscriptions while temporarily in another member state, with no VPN needed.