Firefox (starting with version 3.5) has introduced the geo-location browsing of the websites that support this feature. When you try to visit a website which supports geo-location feature in Firefox, it can inform that website of your location so that your visit to that site becomes more useful and much more relevant. It will enable that website to show you the content which is more relevant to you. For example, if you are looking for a particular item or place, such as a movie, the website could show you the results which are more relevant for your location.
However, to take care of the privacy concerns, Firefox will inform the website, being visited by you, of your location only if you agree to disclose your location to that particular website. When you try to visit a location-aware website in Firefox, it will first ask you if you would like to disclose your location to that website. If you agree for that, then only Firefox will automatically gather information about your computer’s IP address and the nearby wireless access points. This information is then sent by Firefox to Google Location Services to get an approximate estimate of your location. It is this location estimate which is then informed to the website which you were trying to visit. All this happens in a fraction of a second. However, to take care of the privacy concerns, if you do not agree to share your location details with the website being visited, Firefox will not even try to find out the IP address of your computer. Therefore, your location would be shared with the location-aware website only when you give your consent for the same, and thus this feature is only optional.
Advantage of location-aware browsing:
The basic purpose of location-aware browsing is to offer you the customized and more relevant web content depending upon your location instead of showing you the general content which may not be relevant to you. Thus, if you are trying to find out direction for a particular destination on a map, the location-aware website will automatically know where you’re already located due to which it can show you more relevant details. Likewise, if you are trying to search for a restaurant, you may be shown details of restaurants from your city or location.
Depending upon what is your location, Firefox may be in a position to automatically know of your location to the accuracy of even a few meters; however, for certain locations the accuracy may be much less. In any case, location determined by Firefox is only an estimated location on the basis of the IP address of your computer and the nearby wireless access points. In future, if the computers become GPS-enabled, and if the web-service providers such as Firefox or Google are able to access your GPS location with your consent, this may allow them to locate you exactly and accurately. This may be useful in certain emergency situations as well.
However, it has to borne in mind that location-aware websites can also use information about location to display advertisements relevant to your location. So, it also has some commercial interest for many web-service providers. In fact, this feature has perhaps already been used by some web-service providers since you generally find advertisements from Google which are relevant to your country or your city. But, generally speaking, it should not alarm you unnecessarily until it is too obtrusive. In fact, sometimes, some of the advertisements shown to you may be quite relevant to you because firstly they relate to the content you are looking for and secondly they are also related to your location.
Firefox states that it does not track your location as you browse the web and that it provides only limited information about your location to the website permitted by you. Moreover, Firefox enables to you cancel the permission granted by you to share your location information with a website if you have given a permission to always give your location to a site. Firefox also allows you to clear the “random client identification number” assigned by Google Location Services which otherwise remains valid for two weeks.
In case you do not want to avail of the location-aware browsing at any time and want to permanently turn-off this feature in your copy of Firefox, you can do so easily. Start Firefox. In the URL bar, type “about:config”. You may be shown a warning (see figure below) that changing the advanced settings may harm the stability, security and performance of Firefox.
After reading the warning, you continue and type “geo.enabled” in the Filter textbox, and then double click on the “geo.enabled” preference. You will notice that its status will change from “default” to “user set” and its value will change from “true” to “false”. The location-aware browsing is now disabled for your copy of Firefox.
Before I conclude, let me point out that as of the time of writing these lines, there are not many websites which can take advantage of this feature of location-aware browsing. But, in future, it is likely to become a norm in view of its usefulness.
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