This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Natao arisiva ity resaka mitohy ity. Mametraha fanontaniana azafady raha mila fanampiana.

Websites seem to accesing information about my location

  • 1 valiny
  • 1 manana an'ity olana ity
  • 12 views
  • Valiny farany nomen'i philipp

ayse.turak
ayse.turak
more options

Some websites seem to be accessing my location, at least, at the city level. For example, if I visit the website "https://www.theguardian.com/uk", even if I am at another country, I will see the weather report for the city I am at that moment. That website has never asked permission for my location. And indeed, it does not appear in the list of such websites in the settings. Firstly, how do I prevent this from happening? Secondly, and more importantly, this makes me wonder which websites may be accessing my location and to what precision.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Some websites seem to be accessing my location, at least, at the city level. For example, if I visit the website "https://www.theguardian.com/uk", even if I am at another country, I will see the weather report for the city I am at that moment. That website has never asked permission for my location. And indeed, it does not appear in the list of such websites in the settings. Firstly, how do I prevent this from happening? Secondly, and more importantly, this makes me wonder which websites may be accessing my location and to what precision. Thanks in advance for any comments.

Vahaolana nofidina

hi, websites can estimate your location based on your ip address that's necessarily submitted with each network request in order to route a reply to the correct recipient.

the only way to work around that is to spoof your ip address with the help of a proxy or vpn-service - which can have other privacy implications though, since you need to trust any such providers as they'd be able to monitor your network traffic you're routing through them.

there are major databases which map ip addresses to a physical location - one provider is publicising it's accuracy data here for example: https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-city-accuracy-comparison

Hamaky an'ity valiny ity @ sehatra 👍 1

All Replies (1)

philipp
philipp
  • Moderator
more options

Vahaolana Nofidina

hi, websites can estimate your location based on your ip address that's necessarily submitted with each network request in order to route a reply to the correct recipient.

the only way to work around that is to spoof your ip address with the help of a proxy or vpn-service - which can have other privacy implications though, since you need to trust any such providers as they'd be able to monitor your network traffic you're routing through them.

there are major databases which map ip addresses to a physical location - one provider is publicising it's accuracy data here for example: https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip2-city-accuracy-comparison