

Firefox 3.5 is "location-aware" - pierrealexandre
http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/

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windsurfer
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?

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statictype
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.

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mixmax
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.

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furyg3
Same thing with me. I'm in Amsterdam, and whenever I turn AdBlock off to
experience the web it its full glory (rarely), all the IP-based targeted ads
think I'm in weird places (generally still in Holland, occasionally in
Germany).

The center of the circle on the map was about 4 meters to the left of _where I
am sitting on the couch_ , and the circle encompasses my block and nothing
more.

Amazing.

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

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BioGeek
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

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

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

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chris24
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.

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ingenium
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...

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pbhj
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?

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

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sachinag
Code from Google: [http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-location-
servi...](http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-location-services-now-
in-mozilla.html)

