FireFox 3.5 Geolocation – scary accurate

Websites that use location-aware browsing will ask where you are in order to bring you more relevant information, or to save you time while searching. Let’s say you’re looking for a pizza restaurant in your area. A website will be able to ask you to share your location so that simply searching for “pizza” will bring you the answers you need… no further information or extra typing required.

Or, if you’re mapping out directions to get somewhere, the website will know where you’re starting from so all you have to do is tell it where you want to go.

This service is totally optional – Firefox doesn’t share your location without your permission – and is done with the utmost respect for your privacy. And, like all elements of Firefox, it’s being created using open standards to ease adoption by Web developers.

I don’t know if I would ever really find this useful, I guess we’ll have to wait and see when FireFox 3.5 is release and website begin employing the feature en mass. However, since I had the beta on my machine I decided to give it a try by visiting the Geolocation demo website. The results were scary. Often when you try to look yourself up by IP, etc you’ll get “close”, usually only getting down to the main switching station for your provider. FireFox and the Geolocation demo site literally pinpointed my exact address! FREAKY! Of course you have to give permission for a site to use Geolocation, and if you want to disable it completely I suggest you check out HowToGeek’s site for explicit instructions.