As its name suggests, geolocation is a tracking practice that focuses entirely on determining the geographic location of internet-connected devices and gathering information about their users so that web apps can leverage it to offer their users specific services/features or relevant recommendations. Although geolocation has several useful applications, it brings with it some privacy concerns. Hence, it’s often advised to hide or spoof your actual location in your web browser to protect your privacy. With that in mind, here’s a guide detailing geolocation and the steps to hide or spoof your location in Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.
What is Geolocation?
Geolocation is the process of estimating the geographic location (latitude and longitude) of any device connected to the internet. Most popular web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox, implement geolocation services via the Geolocation API and help web applications access their users’ locations so they can serve their users better. Generally speaking, there are numerous applications where you can see geolocation in action. Navigation services, check-ins and geotagged posts on social media, food ordering services, and weather apps are a few such examples from everyday life.
How Does Geolocation Work?
Although the Geolocation API plays a significant role in enabling geolocation services on browsers, it doesn’t provide location information on its own. Instead, that task is taken care of by the device, and the API is responsible only for serving the curated location data to the browser. As for location tracking, geolocation relies on a few different methods, like GPS tracking, Wi-Fi positioning system, and IP address tracking, to deduce a device’s location. So depending on where you’re located, any of these methods can be used accordingly to locate your device.
When Should You Hide or Spoof Your Location?
Hiding and spoofing your location in a browser are two ways to prevent websites from collecting your device’s location information. Both of these methods work differently but have pretty much the same objective: keep geotracking at bay and safeguard your privacy. While hiding the location entails disabling geolocation services in your browser, spoofing involves faking your default location to some other city in the world. Not just that, spoofing also facilitates unblocking of geo-blocked content so you can access the content of different regions from your current location.
How to Hide Location on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox
Hiding your location on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox is easy: you just have to disable geolocation from the browser settings on your Mac or Windows PC, and it’ll prevent websites from tracking your physical location.
1. Hide Location on Google Chrome
Follow the steps below to hide your geolocation in Google Chrome:
2. Hide Location on Microsoft Edge
Similar to Google Chrome, you can hide location on Microsoft Edge using the steps listed below:
3. Hide Location on Firefox
To hide your location in Firefox, use the following steps:
How to Spoof Location on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox
As we mentioned earlier, hiding location helps you prevent web browsers from accessing your physical location. However, if you want to strengthen your privacy even further, you have to spoof your location to trick the web browser into thinking that you’re located in some other location.
1. Spoof Location on Google Chrome
The easiest way to spoof or fake your location in Google Chrome is to use a browser extension. One such extension is Location Guard, which works by giving your fake location to the different websites you visit on the web. It offers three privacy levels — choose the highest level for better privacy. Download: Location Guard Once downloaded, follow the steps below to spoof your location on Chrome:
2. Spoof Location on Microsoft Edge
Unlike Chrome, Microsoft Edge offers a pretty straightforward way of spoofing your location. Follow these steps to spoof your location in Edge:
3. Spoof Location on Firefox
Compared to Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, Firefox is the easiest to spoof your location. Here’s how to do it: Make sure to replace the X and Y values in the above line with the latitude and longitude values you copied in step 5.
Hiding or Spoofing Your Location to Prevent Geopositioning
Using this guide, you can easily hide or spoof your location in Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox and prevent websites from geopositioning you on the internet and serving you targeted ads. However, do note that these steps restrict only a part of what constitutes web tracking, and there are several other ways in which websites can track you on the web. So if you want stricter privacy and security, you should consider using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) or Tor (The Onion Router) service, which masks your IP address to secure your internet activities and prevent you from being tracked online.
