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Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by kelnos on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @03:55PM (#35793224)
GeoIP tells you at best what city someone is in, and even then, for smaller towns, will usually report the nearest large city, which could be quite a ways a way. Not to mention it's often even just flat-out wrong. VPNs and other things distort where you are. Sometimes a website might need (or at least think it needs) correct, fine-grained location information.

I do suspect that most websites that ask for location information could do fine with GeoIP, but that doesn't mean there isn't any use for more reliable, fine-grained location data.

Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by danielheath on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:12PM (#35794925)
Okay, but I never told Firefox my location, so what’s it doing that geoip can’t?
Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by ktosobcy on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @06:42PM (#35795176)
like Google and apple - they use exact locations of WiFi hotspots most of the time...
Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by saagarjha on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @02:08AM (#35798618)
That’s not something a webpage can access.
Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by shmoe on Wednesday May 03, 2023 @03:27AM (#35799205)
It's something a webpage can access on it's backend (the database of ssid/bssid and their locations) and something your computer uses(the access points its seeing) to locate you in the lack of a gps receiver and saying yes to the browser seeing your location.
Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by ktosobcy on Thursday May 04, 2023 @10:41PM (#35824666)
Browsers have geolocation api, webpage uses it. Then browser utilizes underlying OS capabilities to determine the location. On the phone it could use GPS, regular PC may relay on SSID of wifi networks, etc.
Re:Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla by u320 on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @07:05PM (#35795394)
In my experience, it will only reliably tell you what country you are in.