Firefox 3.5 is "location-aware"

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/

by pierrealexandre • 17 years ago

21 17 17 years ago

en-us.www.mozilla.com

pierrealexandre• 17 years ago

The feature "display my position" is available in Google Maps. It is not when I use Safari 4.0.

fractalus• 17 years ago

Is there a way for it not to guess my position? I happen to have a desktop computer that´s very hard to move.

BioGeek• 17 years ago

How do I turn off Location-Aware Browsing permanently?

Location-Aware Browsing is always opt-in in Firefox 3.5. No location information is ever sent without your permission. If you wish to disable the feature completely, please follow this set of steps:

    * In the URL bar, type about:config
    * Type geo.enabled
    * Double click on the geo.enabled preference
    * Location-Aware Browsing is now disabled

teeja• 17 years ago

To select on a site-by-site basis: select Tools>Page info>Permissions.

chrisbolt• 17 years ago

I think he meant, how do you tell your browser exactly where you are.

windsurfer• 17 years ago

How the hell does it know my nearby access points? I'm running it on Ubuntu. Sure, it's possible, but how does it have access to this information? Does it contain code to access every wifi-manager API in existence?

statictype2• 17 years ago

Yeah, I was blown away by this as well. I'm guessing the ip address is enough. Google Chrome pinpointed my location down to the apartment block. Kind of scary, actually.

mixmax• 17 years ago

That's not the whole story. I'm based in Copenhagen but for some reason my IP belongs to a Swedish batch, so I'm constantly being served Swedish ads instead of Danish ones. This service got my location right to within 100 meters. Also, I have a 3G wireless connection that plugs into my laptop, so that I can take it anywhere. There's noway that an IP address can convey my exact location.

Mongoose• 17 years ago

Any resources on how to leverage this? Their FAQ offers no info for developers.

sachinag• 17 years ago

Code from Google: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-location-servi...

joechung• 17 years ago

W3C spec - http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/

just_the_tip• 17 years ago

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Using_geolocation

chris24• 17 years ago

Is anyone else getting funky results with this? It always returns 40.75, -73.997 (New York City) as my location, but I'm in Toronto.

ingenium• 17 years ago

I always get incorrect results for anything that uses the location feature in Firefox 3.5. This time it put me in Chicago, but I've been put in NYC and San Francisco before as well. I'm NEVER in the correct location (Pittsburgh). I'm running Ubuntu for what it's worth. You would think that it would do a reverse DNS on the IP at least to make sure it gets the city correct...

pbhj• 17 years ago

What network are you on, if your access is via a corporate net then perhaps your connection is being tunneled to another location first; or maybe it's picking up a proxy server address?

Firefox 3.5 is "location-aware"

Related Stories