BBC website can detect my precise location even connected to VPN (German server)!

[airvpnmember 0]

Hi Airvpn team,

first of all, I would like to thank you for providing a first class service!

Now, here is my issue -

I connected to one of your German servers and could confirm that all was ok by going to dnsleaktest.com and geoiptool.com. Then, I accessed the BBC website and used the "change your location" (please see the attached image) and clicked on "detect your location" link. To my surprise, my EXACT physical location was displayed! I doubled checked to make sure that my VPN connection was still up, and I could see that it was fine.

I have read about your experimental service to bypass IP geo-location based censorship - https://airvpn.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=3&id=7600&Itemid=142

In my case, the DNS is set to use OpenDNS.

can you shed any light of this please?

Thank you.

[asdf1234567 0]

From the photo it looks like they may have used your nearby wireless access points/other hardware to correlate your location.

You see that Circle that's kind of like a cross-hare like thing? That's the icon most things use for "Geolocation" and is a new feature of HTML5.

You should use/configure a browser that respects your privacy and asks you before accepting.

For geolocation refrence see: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_geolocation.asp

[airvpnmember 0]

I learned something new today . Thanks for the explanation Nakato, much appreciated.

It just got me thinking that, if this kind of functionality is available the its only a matter of time before someone comes up with a way to trigger the "geolocation" function without approval from the user.

I wonder if someone knows if there is a way to turn this thing off in the browser?

[airvpnmember 0]

Aswering my own question -

disabling geo location in firefox -> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/geolocation/

disabling geo location in chrome -> http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16404/how-to-disable-the-new-geolocation-feature-in-google-chrome/