Geolocation spoofing

A page calls the position interface and the browser puts a prompt in front of you. Nothing reaches the page until that prompt is answered.

1. 1

   Asks the browser

   The prompt names the site and waits, and a page cannot answer it on your behalf.

2. 2

   Answers when allowed

   An ordinary browser takes the position from the system: from nearby networks or from a receiver in the device, accurate to a street.

3. 3

   Falls back to your address

   A refusal leaves the site with the address you came from, which places you in a region.

These are read in your browser on this page and sent nowhere. Your position is not among them: a site gets that only through the prompt.

The profile window has a Location block, and it sets what a site gets after "Allow". A new profile gets "Near the proxy address".

• Near the proxy address

  A point 0.3 to 2.5 km from where the address directory puts the proxy exit, with an accuracy of 20 to 150 m. Each profile has its own, the same at every start.

• My coordinates

  The latitude, longitude and accuracy from 1 to 5000 m that you type in. Past 50 km from the checked proxy address, the window names the distance.

• This computer's real location

  What an ordinary browser does. On a Mac the system does not give the program a location, so a site gets a refusal even after "Allow".

• Block

  Any site that asks for the position is refused, including one that was allowed before.

The point goes into the browser engine before the site gets its answer, so the page reads the engine's own reply: the object Chrome returns, with empty altitude, heading and speed and the same refusal text. Nothing in the page is rewritten.

In the built-in engine a site gets "yes" only once the point is in place, and a refusal otherwise. In ARMANOS Browser the point is set on a new tab before its first line runs and again as each new page starts loading.

By default a profile asks, like an ordinary browser, and a site's answer lasts while the profile is open. "Share without asking" is for profiles that run scripts without you.

With it, the built-in engine shows a site "ask" until the site asks, then says "yes" 0.6 to 2.5 s later, as a click would.

ARMANOS Browser shows "allowed" before the site asks. An ordinary Chrome does not, and the profile window says so next to the box.

The exit location is measured through the proxy itself, in the same answer as the country, in the background at start. It is measured again when the last one is over six hours old or the proxy or its address has changed.

A new reading within 25 km of the old one does not move the point, because services place one address differently. Until the exit is measured, including a proxy changed on an open profile until it restarts, a site gets "location unavailable", not the computer's location.

An address in one country next to a clock from another gives a visitor away harder than any single reading. So a profile aligns the clock and the language list with the exit country and puts the point next to the same address.

The clock follows the country, not the city. In seven countries with several time zones, from the US to Indonesia, the clock and the point can land in different zones, and the fingerprint card says so.

• Timezone spoofing

  The clock, which follows the country of your address and needs no prompt of its own.

• IP geolocation

  What a database says about your address. A check reads that record, not the room you are sitting in.

• A VPN

  It moves the address your traffic comes from. It does not touch what the position interface answers once you allow it.