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Firefox gets my location wrong!

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Firefox ALWAYS gets my location wrong (sometimes by 5 miles and sometimes by hundreds of miles) and I can't find a way to set it. Help!

Firefox ALWAYS gets my location wrong (sometimes by 5 miles and sometimes by hundreds of miles) and I can't find a way to set it. Help!

All Replies (3)

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Hi ifiglus, if a website is displaying your location to you, it could base that on three different things:

(1) MOST COMMON: Your current IP address, assigned by your home, office, or coffee shop internet service provider. To see an example of what location services tell sites about IP addresses, you can consult sites like this one:

https://www.iplocation.net/

Note: if you quote a URL in your reply, your post will go into a spam moderation queue before appearing here.

(2) Precise location coordinates, after the site requested it and you granted Firefox permission to share that information -- if your device doesn't have a GPS radio, this generally is looked up in Google's database of wi-fi hotspot names and locations.

If you never see this prompt --

-- then either that site doesn't request precise location information or Firefox is hiding those requests for some reason. More info: Does Firefox share my location with websites?

(3) Information you provided to the site, for example, by creating an account

By the way, the reason I mention what a web page will show you is that Firefox itself is primarily looking at your general locale (e.g., United States) to determine language, features, etc., and not a more precise location.

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Sometimes a website will just use the listed business address of your service provider based on the IP address range, instead of your actual location. If you have a dynamic IP address, it is more difficult for a site to accurately determine your position, than if you had a static address which never changed.

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You can try this extension.