# How to avoid online location detection/tracking



## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Question for the computer & Internet savvy out there...

How can we avoid websites from detecting our location, tracking us based on that, and providing "personalized" & "localized" content?

For instance, every time I sign in or out of my Yahoo email, on the Yahoo home page, I see the following:










It always detects my current location, and shows me weather, events, and other location-specific information.
I have tried clearing cookies, using InPrivate Browsing feature (in I.E.), turning off location detection (in Firefox), etc. but nothing seems to work.

On the phone, it is easier to control by turning off the GPS location tracking, but that does not work on a computer.

The only thing that works (in the case of Yahoo) is to set up a location preference in your profile.
Then it always uses that location.
But it is still tracking us, and anyway that does not work for other services like Facebook and Google.

From the limited reading I have done online, it seems that the various browsers can only "suggest" to the websites that the user does not wish to be tracked, but cannot enforce it.
The only way around it is to use proxy servers or DNS located in other cities/countries, but that has its own issues.

Anyone else looked into this?


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

HaroldCrump said:


> Question for the computer & Internet savvy out there...
> 
> How can we avoid websites from detecting our location, tracking us based on that, and providing "personalized" & "localized" content?
> 
> ...


Yahoo knows your current location from your personal information that you filled out with them when you registered an account with them.

-*Profile * (although they are saying your profile will no longer be visible to others ...soon..that is the message I got today

- *Contact information * (how they need to contact you...email addresses, telephone number and postal code. The postal code will
determine which city you live in

-*signin/security*
-*Account settings *

*Yahoo! collects personal information when you register with Yahoo!, when you use Yahoo! products or services, when you visit Yahoo! pages or the pages of certain Yahoo! partners, and when you enter promotions or sweepstakes. Yahoo! may combine information about you that we have with information we obtain from business partners or other companies.*

*When you register we ask for information such as your name, gender, birth date, postal code and email address. Once you register with Yahoo! and sign in to our services, you are not anonymous to us.*

*Yahoo! collects information about your transactions with us and with some of our business partners, including information about your use of financial products and services that we offer.*

YAHOO PRIVACY POLICY (from their web pages)


> *Yahoo! automatically receives and records information from your computer and browser, including your IP address, Yahoo! cookie information, software and hardware attributes, and the page you request*.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

carverman said:


> Yahoo! automatically receives and records information from your computer and browser, including your IP address


^ This is part that I need to prevent/work-around.
I am not worried about the information in the profile.

Even when I am not signed in, it still detects the location (using IP address, I assume).

And this is not a Yahoo specific problem, BTW - _everyone _is doing it - Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, all the major social media sites.


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## Eder (Feb 16, 2011)

http://download.cnet.com/Easy-Hide-IP/3000-2144_4-10714026.html is a decent program...there are many others. You get what you pay for but they all work.


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## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

HaroldCrump said:


> ^ This is part that I need to prevent/work-around.
> I am not worried about the information in the profile.
> 
> Even when I am not signed in, it still detects the location (using IP address, I assume).
> ...


What you're probably looking for is a VPN service, like the ones CDN people use to get a US IP address for various reasons.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Then there is this free software;


> *Tor* is a free software program that you load onto your computer (like a browser) that hides your IP address every time you send or request data on the Internet. The process is layered with heavy-duty encryption, which means your data is layered with privacy protection.





> Then there's the route your data takes as it travels to its destination: Tor will bounce your Internet requests and data through a vast and extensive network of relays (servers) around the world. That data path is never the same, because Tor uses up to 5,000 Tor relays to send your data request. Think of it as a huge network of "hidden" servers that will keep your online identity (meaning your IP address) and your location invisible.





> By using Tor, websites will no longer be able to track the physical location of your IP address or what you have been looking at online...and neither will any interested organizations that may want to monitor someone's Internet activity—meaning law enforcement or government security agencies. Tor is like a proxy on steroids.


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

proxies and vpn's ...

i use http://www.unblock-us.com/ for $4.99

it puts my address in the usa or uk or wherever i want to be and then i can access usa content


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

fatcat said:


> proxies and vpn's ...


That would be the way to go....however, if you encounter any problems with your internet connection,
you may have some difficulty troubleshooting it.

Last year my internet connection was down for about 2 days. I had to work with my ISP technical assistance.
I spent several hours with them online trying to figure out why I wasn't getting out on the internet.
Had to go out and buy a backup modem...and talked to 2 or 3 techs.
Finally on the second day, after they decided it was not my computer s/w or the modem, they moved me
over to another DNS server and I got my internet back.

All I'm saying here is... if you hide the IP address that is given to you by your ISP, have fun troubleshooting 
any internet problems.


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## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

carverman said:


> All I'm saying here is... if you hide the IP address that is given to you by your ISP, have fun troubleshooting
> any internet problems.


That's a non-issue, you can enable/disable using the VPN whenever you like.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

cainvest said:


> That's a non-issue, you can enable/disable using the VPN whenever you like.


I use VPNs a lot when travelling for various reasons such as jumping through security hoops and privacy. They can actually mess up your computer's network settings and turning them off does not necessarily reverse the changes. I had this happen to both my MacBook and desktop PC. The only way I knew that it was the VPN and not the ISP was because I had other devices to test the network. On the MacBook I only had to uninstall the VPN software, but on Windows I had to google some techie forums and uninstall some network drivers (they reset themselves on a restart). It was probably a simple bug with the VPN provider's software but since it happened on both OS, I just asked for a refund and tried another VPN. I haven't found a perfect one as they all seem a bit unstable at times and can degrade the connection.


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## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

m3s said:


> I haven't found a perfect one as they all seem a bit unstable at times and can degrade the connection.


Some can be quite bad though a fair number work ok nowadays, know a few people that use them regularly. The bad thing is they always have overhead, layer on layer issues, which shows up right away on the badly written ones. I definitely wouldn't use any of the ones that didn't come with a simple enable/disable feature.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

That one had the option to enable/disable, as well as several VPN protocols and selectable servers by city around the world. It was supposed to be one of the more advanced. Simply disabling it or restarting did not fix the network connection. Different servers seem to bog down or disconnect at times so I prefer to leave it off unless I need it. Using the Tor network for privacy just raises a flag for the NSA to look into what you're trying to hide. Kind of counter intuitive really.


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

cainvest said:


> That's a non-issue, you can enable/disable using the VPN whenever you like.


+1 ... you just delete the ip address of the vpn and use your isp's

i'm happy with unblockus ... they will be getting my 5 bucks for a long time
i have been using it for several weeks and it has performed flawlessly


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Do all these VPN/DNS softwares/products redirect traffic through their own servers in order to substitute a different location IP address?
The description of the first link posted above (Easy Hide IP) seems to indicate that.
Is this how most of them work?

If so, then there are additional concerns (in addition to stability issues).
If all traffic is being directed through a 3rd party server, all financial transactions (like online banking, online shopping, etc.) is also passing through their servers.
How secure are these servers? Can they get hacked?
What is the guarantee that these providers themselves are not harvesting our data?

Secondly, what privacy & security laws are we subject to?
If server is located in the US, will our data get monitored/harvested by the NSA?
If server is located in China, will the CPC harvest our data?

I don't really want to redirect all my Internet browsing through an unknown 3rd party located in an unknown country.
I was thinking of something similar to how we block cookies on the browser.
If cookies are blocked, the browser will not send the cookies from your local computer to the website, even if it requests cookies.
It will not allow the websites to save cookies to the local computer, even if the code in the website tries to do so.

There should be something in the browser that allows users to blank out their IP address from the data sent to the websites.


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## Woz (Sep 5, 2013)

HaroldCrump said:


> If cookies are blocked, the browser will not send the cookies from your local computer to the website, even if it requests cookies.
> It will not allow the websites to save cookies to the local computer, even if the code in the website tries to do so.
> 
> There should be something in the browser that allows users to blank out their IP address from the data sent to the websites.


What you’re describing isn't really possible. When you go to a website you send a request to that website asking them to send you their content to an IP address that you provide. If you hide your IP address or spoof it then they wouldn't know where to send the website. That’s why all of the methods to hide your location involve inserting a middleman to forward the traffic. It's a bit like how do you subscribe to a magazine without providing your mailing address.


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## cainvest (May 1, 2013)

HaroldCrump said:


> Do all these VPN/DNS softwares/products redirect traffic through their own servers in order to substitute a different location IP address?
> The description of the first link posted above (Easy Hide IP) seems to indicate that.
> Is this how most of them work?


Yes, the VPN makes your IP appear as if you're somewhere else. 
Using different DNS servers alone does not do that, it just changes the IP address returned for a given URL lookup.



HaroldCrump said:


> If so, then there are additional concerns (in addition to stability issues).
> If all traffic is being directed through a 3rd party server, all financial transactions (like online banking, online shopping, etc.) is also passing through their servers.
> How secure are these servers? Can they get hacked?
> What is the guarantee that these providers themselves are not harvesting our data?


Routing a https connection through their servers is pretty secure, just don't use a regular http connections. Secure https connections are not likely to suffer from "man in the middle" or "data stealing".


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## none (Jan 15, 2013)

fatcat said:


> proxies and vpn's ...
> 
> i use http://www.unblock-us.com/ for $4.99
> 
> it puts my address in the usa or uk or wherever i want to be and then i can access usa content


What a second.... weren't you the same person harping on me for stealing content (via bittorrent)..... wow, hypocrisy much? That's hilarious.

Welcome to the dark side BWAH HA HA!

Well your credibilty seems to be shot...


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## FrugalTrader (Oct 13, 2008)

As others mentioned a VPN, I can vouch for Private Internet Access. 

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

^ I have heard good things about them as well, FT.

Financial information is secured by the encryption between you and the FI, regardless of the route the traffic takes. Using a VPN just makes it more difficult for anyone to tell that you are communicating with a given FI. The risk with VPNs is them logging unencrypted data (though anyone between you and the destination can do this) and tracking which parties you exchange encrypted traffic with. In most cases, your ISP is likely a worse risk.

One benefit of VPNs is that it can disguise traffic that is susceptible to ISP traffic shaping, such as Youtube/Netflix/etc.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Your ISP can ID your physical address based on your IP. You can encrypt a private tunnel to a virtual IP address, but anything as simple as a username or string of unique data could link you back again.

Besides maybe deep web, I don't think a VPN is truly private. And that's probably a good thing. I use a VPN to get through silly "security" hoops, and to stream English content in non-English countries etc


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