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Comment by sskates | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, but why are so many people against sharing their location through the browser? You already give up your OS, browser version, and IP address (which can give a rough location) just by visiting the website. I understand if someone personally has something against sharing their precise physical location, but I don't understand why it's an issue for so many people.

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That's a huge difference. I keep feeling like there is this generation of very naive programmers out there. Yes, it's true, the IP address can be used to determine where you are on a mobile phone ... If you get a subpoena!

There's a big difference from "Sure, by using this phone, I know Homeland Security can find me" and "I guess I will let every website I visit know where I am; what the hell, privacy is a commodity!"

This attitude seems very strange to me. It is certainly in line with this "new way of thinking about privacy" but it has really nothing to do with reality.

I think he was referring to Geo-IP location (approximating your location based on your ip address). About 60-75% of the time it's accurate to the city - provided you're not using mobile broadband.

Of course there are a number of other ways to get higher resolution location without consent. An older but commonly known one is Samy's XSS exploit (http://www.samy.pl/mapxss/).

Um...because most people don't want to share their precise physical location just to get local movie times? Zip code is close enough for good enough results.

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