General of Darkness
7th February 2013, 01:22 PM
I found this at GLP and thought it was worth sharing. I'm going to do this.
Have you ever been surfing the net and go to a search page or something and see your location pop up? Or maybe have been targeted by advertising that seems to accurately "guess" where you are?
That is geolocating and this simple fix will put a stop to it.
Location aware browsing is a huge privacy issue.
Basically what it does is every time you go to a website that requests your location your browser will give it geo-locating information such as IP addresses to let the requesting site track you to wherever you are.
There is a very simple process to turn this feature off for good.
In your browser's address bar, type in about:config. There will be a box that pops up that warns about warranty info expiring blah blah blah. Ignore this warning and click I will be careful.
When you get to this page, there will be a search window at the top. What you need to do is type this in that search window exactly as written here. Just copy and paste.
geo.enabled
It will search your files and that one file will be singled out and displayed at the top of your search window.
Double click it to turn it off. You should see the value n the window change from true to false.
You're all finished. You have totally blocked access to your geo-location feature in your browser.
Just remember, anytime you update Firefox, your settings will set back to default so you will have to set the number at zero again to stop it.
Something else I wanted to discuss with you as well...
Did you know that when you visit a website on the internet, your computer deposits a cookie that lets the new website know what site you arrived there from.
So say you were looking at porn and then came to GLP, GLP would know which porn site you came from before you arrived.
Not exactly private but there is an easy fix.
We're going to do the same as last time by typing about:config into your browser's address bar.
Once you get in, type this into the search bar at the top.
network.http.sendRefererHeader
When the file is isolated, right click it, click modify and set the number value to 0 (zero).
That's it, you have stopped your browser from giving referrer information to the next site you visit. Again, remember that if you ever update your browser, you will have to do this over again so make a note to self.
Have you ever been surfing the net and go to a search page or something and see your location pop up? Or maybe have been targeted by advertising that seems to accurately "guess" where you are?
That is geolocating and this simple fix will put a stop to it.
Location aware browsing is a huge privacy issue.
Basically what it does is every time you go to a website that requests your location your browser will give it geo-locating information such as IP addresses to let the requesting site track you to wherever you are.
There is a very simple process to turn this feature off for good.
In your browser's address bar, type in about:config. There will be a box that pops up that warns about warranty info expiring blah blah blah. Ignore this warning and click I will be careful.
When you get to this page, there will be a search window at the top. What you need to do is type this in that search window exactly as written here. Just copy and paste.
geo.enabled
It will search your files and that one file will be singled out and displayed at the top of your search window.
Double click it to turn it off. You should see the value n the window change from true to false.
You're all finished. You have totally blocked access to your geo-location feature in your browser.
Just remember, anytime you update Firefox, your settings will set back to default so you will have to set the number at zero again to stop it.
Something else I wanted to discuss with you as well...
Did you know that when you visit a website on the internet, your computer deposits a cookie that lets the new website know what site you arrived there from.
So say you were looking at porn and then came to GLP, GLP would know which porn site you came from before you arrived.
Not exactly private but there is an easy fix.
We're going to do the same as last time by typing about:config into your browser's address bar.
Once you get in, type this into the search bar at the top.
network.http.sendRefererHeader
When the file is isolated, right click it, click modify and set the number value to 0 (zero).
That's it, you have stopped your browser from giving referrer information to the next site you visit. Again, remember that if you ever update your browser, you will have to do this over again so make a note to self.