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I am a bit confused of how does the "sharing your location" feature works in browsers. Assume I am using Chrome, I have the following questions:

  1. When a website prompt the pop-up request "this website want to know your location", when I click "allow", what will the browser do?

  2. If I click "do not allow", can the website still obtain my IP address and use it to locate me? My assumptions are if a web server is virtual hosted on a cloud server, my IP address will be intercepted at the front end and may or may not be forwarded to the origin server.

  3. If the IP can nontheless be known by the origin server and use it to locate me, I wonder how much practical value does the "sharing your location" option have (well I understand in many case IP may not be accurate, but in many other case it is)?

  4. In the case that my IP is not accurate and can't be used to locate me, how would "allowing the website to access my location" make the website know my location?

Revision: So I knew the basic drills such as GPS data will help on more accurate location, and how IP can be obfuscated either intentionally or unintentionally. I think my question boils down to, what extra information does Google have, such that enabling and disabling "share my location" can really make a difference: assuming I use a brand new desktop, is it true that if my IP is inaccurate, then Google can't know where I am either, if my IP is accurate, the website gonna know no matter I choose to share my location or not?

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  • I think there is enough info from your discussion with schroeder to help with some of your misunderstandings, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to spell it out. First, a web application always knows your IP address. If it didn't then you wouldn't be able to communicate with it. Your assumption in #2 is incorrect, and is based on a bit of a misunderstanding of how networks and web applications work.
    – Conor Mancone
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 18:01
  • As schroeder says, IP addresses don't give very good geolocation information. Sometimes it can't even get you to the right city. Sometimes it may be more accurate, but rarely, especially for home users. The "Sharing your location" option from browsers is intended to give more accurate information than the IP address. There are a variety of ways it might do this which depend on what kind of device you are using (phone, desktop, laptop, etc...)
    – Conor Mancone
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 18:02
  • @conorMancone: for my assumption #2, say that you have Apache behind Nginx reverse proxy, the reverse proxy is going to intercept requests from wherever, and sent it to localhost, and use port number to differentiate different vHosts, and Apache as origin server will only see 127.0.0.1, unless the reverse proxy choose to attache a X-Forwarded-For to forward the origin IP where the request is from.
    – SamTest
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 21:13
  • @conormancone, I know about that Google do war driving and collect Wifi ssid. So other than that, and some browsing history that may facilitate Google's machine learning, Google has nothing more information than a regular website? Then I just wonder how much practicality disabling "share my location" provides?
    – SamTest
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 21:15
  • But all of that infrastructure is under the control of the person who runs the app. If they want to collect your IP address they can and will, regardless of how their infrastructure is setup. Also, you're focused on google but remember that this is a cross-browser feature. It's possible that chrome uses additional methods to suggest your location, but firefox/safari don't have access to these things and they may not be the most accurate anyway. Again, the link schroeder gave you states exactly what the main data source is.
    – Conor Mancone
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 21:20

2 Answers 2

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You assume that IP provides accurate location. It doesn't. IPs might narrow down the city, unless you are using a VPN or tunneling to a remote corporate network, for instance.

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  • In most cases, for an ordinary user, the IP address is pretty accurate, unless, as you said, I use some way to obfuscate the IP. So essentially my question was, does disabling "share my location" option from any browser prevent a website obtaining my IP address? If not, I can't see much value of have such an option at all.
    – SamTest
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 17:04
  • 2
    "in most cases, it's pretty accurate" - that's not true at all. It might be true in your area, but in many areas, the IP the home user gets is attributed to a neighboring towm, and in some cases, is attributed to the ISP's head office location.
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 17:12
  • So, you are saying that your real question is, "does disabling "share my location" option from any browser prevent a website obtaining my IP address" ????? Um, what? How would you be connecting to the website if it can't know your IP?
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 17:14
  • Well, my intuitive assumption is that because TCP/IP is in lower layer, the origin server runs on the application layer may not necessarily obtain the IP, especially if it is hosted in the cloud.
    – SamTest
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 17:26
  • So if the IP is not accurate as you said, what exactly does "sharing my location" do? How would enabling this option let the website know where exactly I am then?
    – SamTest
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 17:27
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How the "Share Your Location" button works depends on your browser. In Google Chrome, for example, this sends information from Google Location Services giving your best estimated position. Your position can be determined in many ways, including:

  1. Your GPS location

  2. Your IP address geolocation

  3. Nearby wifi access points (Google scrapes access point data with their Google Maps cars)

  4. Your search history

  5. You explicitly telling Google where your home is, your workplace, etc.

If you deny websites access to your location, they do still get your IP address, as the other answer addresses.

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  • #3 - definitely one of the creepier ways they determine location, even though it may (occasionally) be useful. That one has occasionally made me consider trying to deploy a network of raspberry pi wifi access points that exchange SSID/MAC addresses regularly to try to confuse the google algorithms... or maybe just deploy them on an army of drones... that probably won't cause more problems than it solves...
    – Conor Mancone
    Commented Feb 28, 2020 at 19:32

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