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Message Subject Did you know that your browser is geolocating you? This is how to turn it off for good.
Poster Handle Anonymous Coward
Post Content
Nothing in the OP will stop websites from geolocating you by your IP address. That has nothing to do with the browser per se. Your IP address is the "return address" other sites use to know where to send what you requested, such as by clicking a link etc.

They know where you are by your IP address because they know the location of the ISP the IP address is assigned to. How close they can get to your exact location depends on the size of the geographic area served by the pool of addresses yours comes from.

There are ways of spoofing the IP address, but they usually entail paid services like proxies. TOR will also do it but it can be painfully slow. You can also spoof geolocating services by using a VPN (virtual private network).

Note that some sites won't accept connections from proxy or TOR servers. Membership sites like web boards are especially sensitive to this because it's frequently how spammers exploit such sites.

Not sure about other browsers, but the "geo.enabled" setting does prevent Firefox from sending enhanced geolocation data (data other than your IP address). However, according to Mozilla, it's always an opt-in, i.e. the browser asks you if you want it to provide geolocation data when it is requested by a website. See their description for details: [link to www.mozilla.org]

Fortunately (or not in some cases), geolocation by IP address doesn't work especially well. For example, if you try to geolocate me by my IP address the result will most likely be Bangkok or Chachoengsao, but I'm a 2-3 hour drive from those places. It does keep me from accessing things like Netflix here though, because Bangkok, while far from here, isn't in the US.

BTW, the "referrer" information isn't in a cookie, it's part of the HTTP request packet generated when you click the link. See this "Mozillazine" article: [link to kb.mozillazine.org]

If you want to obscure the page you're coming from, rather than clicking a link to the next page, you can simply copy-paste the link into the address bar of your browser. The browser won't identify the current page as the "referrer" because you didn't click anything on that site to get to the next site.
 
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