I am having weather.com report my exact location even while I have my VPN using an IP that geolocates to Phoenix (173.xx.xxx.xx) To make matters worse, I choose the 'Chicago1 location'. Google resolves my location as "Unknown". My VPN provider is IBVPN. I use a DNS Jumper 1.06 to flush and reset my DNS to various free providers (OpenDNS, OpenNIC, etc.) so it should make no difference that I leak my ISP's DNS as a means to properly track my physical location. I have flushed all cookies and still weather.com sees my true location. Firefox 38. Ideas?
WebRTC? Less likely, flash cookies? Your ISP's DNS should only be able to identify you to be within a radius of 100km or so I think. It's best to use one browser for non-VPN stuff and another for VPN stuff, btw.
I just tested it and weather.com reports my vpn location with generic Windows OpenVPN. It could well be WebRTC which is easily disabled in Firefox. It could also be something in the VPN client software. I've not been all that impressed with a lot of the custom VPN clients. Using a router connection or generic OpenVPN for Windows has worked much better for me. In Linux, OpenVPN is much more integrated into the OS. I'm going to have to try weather.com in Ubuntu with a VPN connection. You've pointed out a good test site. It's a jumble of JS with multiple domains furnishing scripting code. I can give both the VPN connection and my javascript throttling a good workout on it.
I'm using a US VPN exit, in a VM that's always used that exit, and weather.com reports another US city. It's in the same region, more or less, but by no means nearby. I'm guessing that someone else using the same exit either leaked their true geolocation to weather.com, or explicitly used some site to provide "correct" geolocation for the IP address. Edit: That was in Firefox. I just tested with Midori, and got the same result. So for this VM, weather.com seems to be just using IP address.
How are you monitoring this to know it's happening? Once you hit the weather.com site, what do you do -- what happens? What site tab are you using that's bringing up the geolocate function?
I don't do anything when I hit the weather.com site but look to see in the upper panel what city it reports.
Certainly have which is why there must be something that is tying this computer to my geolocation, the question is what is that something.
I have the Disable WebRTC Firefox addon, Better Privacy for flash cookies, I dumped all my cookies, restarted FFox three times and still weather.com show my true geolocation, a small town of 10,000 in Florida. I am leaning toward the IBVPN client somehow screwing this up but still dunno for sure.
I have noticed similar behavior with Firefox and Mullvad, not with Weather.com but when checking for extension updates from Mozilla. Using Tcpview, I can see Firefox going to my local "update farm" when I am coming from Sweden. Perhaps Firefox stores some location string? I really don't know.
Now this is getting to be real fun. I launched Seamonkey which I have never used with my IBVPN until now and has never been to weather.com. I googled "weather" and Google geolocated me to within a 10 mile radius but NOT the exact little town I live in. Going to weather.com geolocates me to a Chicago IP which is what I selected in the IVBPN client ('Chicago1) and not to the Phoenix IP address using FFox. Note the following 173.xxx.xxx.xxx.rdns.ubiquityservers.com Your User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:36.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/36.0 SeaMonkey/2.33.1 lol
From Chrome Your IPv4 Address Is: 173.xxx.xxx.xx Your IP Details: ISP: Nobis Technology Group, LLC Services: None Detected City: Phoenix Region: Arizona Country: United States
Try weather.com on a clean system that has never been used with your real IP. This could be something as simple as a cookie or something in your cache. I just checked the IBVPN website. It could be something in their client too but they are using pretty standard VPN technology. No direct support of generic OpenVPN but they support Linux and DD-WRT which means it should work but you would have to make your own .ovpn files.
@Kundalini Does your computer have WiFi? Do you have a Google account? If so, were you logged in? Have you disabled geolocation in the browsers that you're using. In Firefox and Seamonkey, browse "about:config", search for "geo" and toggle "geo.enabled" to "false". I don't know Chrome.
Wifi, yes. Google account, yes, but I clear all Google crap and restart my browser after using Google Voice. I am going to 'false' every "geo" in about:config, good ideas, thanks.
I suspect that somehow Google has obtained your geolocation through the WiFi, and may have your WiFi router's MAC in its databases. And that weather.com is reading the geolocation record.
I finally dumped IBVPN for no oter reason tan they couldn't set a particular city as a selection in their client (e.g. Chicago1) and actually have the IP address sahow it was in Chicago. Now that is another discussion why that is but I'm not interested in IP geolocation confusion.
Wouldn't that show up in Google searches as my true location? b/c it hasn't. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ip-vpn-and-cookies.377701/#post-2504869
Yes but my IP address, router and MAC addresses are specific to my little town not the next large town over. When I use Google searching, it specs out my little town exactly.
Maybe a Google car has driven by your location, and obtained your WiFi router's geolocation, keyed to its MAC address. And then maybe Google uses HTML5 geolocation in Firefox etc. See http://superuser.com/questions/77460/how-does-precise-geolocation-in-html5-work
