After years being analyzed and classified by advertisers and advertising agencies, search engines and all kinds of internet companies, a time has come when many users have stood up. They no longer want their consumption habits or the use of apps or devices run around like a commodity for which many companies pay considerable amounts. Data like the time you spend on certain pages, what searches you do, what device you use or even the browser location. That is, from where you connect.
That the pages you visit know the location of the browser has its advantages. To start with, let it show in your language. Or if it is a store, show products that you can receive where you live. Or see content that interests you and not someone who lives in Laos or Connecticut. But it has its cons, like that they prevent you access certain contentthe information displayed is altered depending on where you are or, directly, that they know from where you connect to the internet.
Hence the popularity of tools like vpn servers. Their main asset is that they tell the internet that you are somewhere other than the location of the browser you are using. A practical way to keep your privacy safe. But most popular browsers have different ways to cheat about your actual location. Let’s see how we can do it with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera.
Change location in Google Chrome
Nowadays, browsers like Google Chrome integrate the possibility of knowing where you are in their code. About. But the location is very accurate, as they get the information from your IP adress, from your internet provider or simply from the WiFi connections that your computer uses. As I said before, it has its practical advantages but also its drawbacks in terms of privacy or access to certain content.
In Google Chrome, we can disable the ability to know the location of the browser. For this we will have to go to the Chrome options for developers. You will find the Developer Tools in View > Developer. You can also activate these tools with the key combination Control + Shift + iif you’re on Windows, or with the combination ALT + Command + i if you use a Mac.
Developer tools open as panels for you to view additional information about a web page and its content. The part that interests us will be found in Console. We press that tab and then the drop-down menu in which three vertical dots appear. If you press it, a list of options will appear. We are interested in the option sensors.
A new tab will open, sensors. there you will see Location either Location. Through the drop-down menu you can change the location of the browser. You can choose a city or directly some parameters of latitude and longitude. Or a time zone. Come on, you can play with these options until you find the most suitable one. The purpose of this function is to carry out development tests, but in practice it will help us to deceive or disguise the location of the browser, that is, where do we connect from.
An alternative that does not require you to do anything if you want to continue using Google Chrome but with more privacy, is to use an alternative like brave. It is a web browser based on Chrome but by default it prevents a web page from knowing the location of your browser. Other Chrome based browsers are Vivaldi, Microsoft Edge, Epic Privacy Browser either Comfortable Dragon. Although these browsers have their own customizations, in almost all of them you should be able to make the same changes with the browser location change.
The location of the browser in Firefox
If you are more of Firefox, the browser that managed to beat Internet Explorer and that continues to fight to be a browser that defends user privacy, know that you can also make changes to disguise or disable the location of the browser while browsing. Basically it is about telling Firefox not to show or share the information related to our geographic location.
By default, Firefox already tries not to spread that information with the pages you visit. What’s more, when you enter a page and it wants to know the location of the browser, you will see a message indicating it. you can tell agree or better not. And in Settings > Permissions You will be able to see what permissions you give to the pages to know your location or other data. You can also directly block pages so they don’t ask. But we are going to add a plus of privacy.
To make this possible we will have to go to the Mozilla Firefox configuration menu. Not the usual. I mean the one you’ll find if you write about:config in the address bar. There are plenty of options out there you shouldn’t touch if you don’t know what you’re doing but they serve to customize the browser in ways you can’t from the Firefox public menu.
Once in about:config let’s look for a specific option called geo.enabled. To search for it, use the search field that you will see in the configuration menu that we have opened. A message may appear telling you that touching this is risky. Since we know what we are going to do, accept the message. when i show up geo.enabledyou will see that by default it has the value true. Click on it and change it to false.
Change location in Opera
Opera is currently based on Google Chrome. More specifically in Chromium. So, in principle, the trick we saw above for Chrome works for Opera. But in Opera we have a more practical tool if we want to hide or change location of the browser facing the pages we visit. It is a free VPN integrated into Opera and that allows choose different locations.
To use the Opera VPN you just have to activate it from the VPN window itself. Before we had to previously activate it from the Opera Settings, but if you have the latest version, it is no longer necessary. Simply click on the vpn icon from the address bar. By default it will say that we are not protected. Press the giant power button and will turn from gray to blue.
Opera’s VPN takes care of connecting to an optimal server. That is, one that prevents knowing the location of the browser but, at the same time, that does not prevent us from surfing the Internet at a acceptable speed. In any case, you can change the server by clicking on Optimal location and selecting one of the available options. The free version of the Opera VPN allows you to choose between three continents: America, Asia Y Europe. If you need to locate yourself in specific places, you can subscribe to the paid version, Opera VPN Pro.