How come Google knows your location even when you're using a VPN?

For most intents and purposes, Google is the big conspiracy-type octopus with tentacles going around the globe and catastrophe in every pie. Naturally, one might desire to hide some details of our lives from our Google spider overlords. But that'due south not always successful. For instance, how does Google know our location despite us using a VPN? Well, the means it can practice it are many – and sometimes, information technology'south our own damn fault.

The way Google knows your location fifty-fifty with a VPN, in brusk:

Google tin can make up one's mind your location despite VPN use by collecting all sorts of geographical data via the browser, the apps, and the settings on your device. Luckily, yous can disable that information collection.

5 ways Google knows your location while you're using a VPN

  1. Browser data collection

Your browser knows what Wi-Fi yous're using. Meanwhile, Google (and other companies) take nerveless a bunch of data on Wi-Fi access points. An Android telephone automatically collects and forwards Wi-Fi BSSID (basically their unique identifiers) and GPS coordinates  to Google. And then if you're connecting to the Wi-Fi at your local coffee shop, your Chrome browser is automatically telling Google, "yo, we're at the John's Actual Factual Coffee Shop in Johannesburg." Thus our company that has long abased the "Do No Evil" slogan knows where you lot parked yourself.

  1. GPS

The Global Positioning System turns a map on your telephone from a glorified paper map scan to a tool that actually shows yous where you are at all times (among other things, similar measuring traffic congestion). But to piece of work like that, information technology needs admission to the GPS system, and this is just beaming your location to Google at all times. At this point, how can Google NOT know where you are?

  1. Cookies and Location History

Cookies are tiny files that websites store on your device to know your preferences and configuration. So if you, say, enter a website for the beginning fourth dimension in Germany, the device volition store the information that you're accessing the website from Deutschland for quicker setups next time. This may non pinpoint your verbal geographic location, merely since region locks care about countries and not cities, it suits those goals but fine.

A more advanced version of this is Google Location History, an account-level choice that stores, well, a history of locations you had been to previously. VPN or no VPN, Google can determine your location by using that stored information.

  1. GSM Cell ID

Hey, remember when nosotros talked nearly Wi-Fi IDs? The same thing happens with prison cell phone towers as well. There are public databases with IDs of cell phone towers , and Google openly states that information technology collects such data for location services . So yes, even switching to mobile data is not a real solution to your problem.

  1. Your VPN is bad

Sometimes, it's the mistake of your VPN equally well! Not all VPNs are made the same; some might be leaking your DNS (Domain Name System), IP (Internet Protocol), or WebRTC (Web Existent-Fourth dimension Communication) information. This is, however, fairly easy to check online. Information technology'southward besides a good thing to do, as a VPN that's leaking data to Google is leaking it to anybody, then why even employ it?

How to stop Google from knowing your location

How to stop Google from knowing your location 

  1. Turn off location tracking on your Google account.

First off, turn off and delete your location history on your Google account. Here's how you do it.

  1. Go to My Activity .
  2. Choose Location history .
  3. Toggle Location history off .
  4. In Manage activity , delete your past history.

  1. Turn off location tracking on your browser.

Every browser has a way of disabling location tracking and preventing sending location data to Google.

For Chrome, yous need to:

  1. Click the 3 dots in the upper right corner to open up the Menu.
  2. Scroll down and click on Settings .
  3. Scroll to Privacy and Security and click Site Settings .
  4. Scroll down to Permissions and click Location .
  5. Cull Do not allow sites to see your location .

You can also find instructions for Firefox , Safari , Edge , and others.

  1. Manage location settings on your telephone.

The nuclear selection for iPhone users is to plow off location services entirely.

  1. Go to Settings , and so Privacy , so Location services .
  2. Toggle information technology off.

Of course, this is somewhat of an extreme approach. If y'all but desire to mess with Google Maps, choose Google Maps nether settings and choose Location. Depending on your desires, you lot tin can choose Never or Only when using the app.  You can too toggle off Precise location to requite Google less information virtually where you are.

For Android users , this gets trickier, every bit each phone manufacturer will have the settings laid out differently for their model. The thought is to go to Settings and discover Location . One time you're there, y'all can:

  1. Toggle Location off, which will preclude all apps from using your location.
  2. Under Improve accuracy , switch off Wi-Fi scanning and Bluetooth scanning .
  3. Find Google Location Accuracy and switch it off.

Of class, the first step makes the other two unnecessary, but if you lot want some apps to utilize your location, you'll need to skip the get-go point.

  1. Become a expert VPN

If your VPN is leaking your location, chances are that you lot're using some free VPN . Don't. Instead, get a skillful paid VPN that has both the resources needed to put in security research and wouldn't leak your data on purpose. Here'south a full guide on how to use a VPN to change location.

Show Google its (just not your) place

Google is so pervasive these days that you can inappreciably escape its reach. But if you know how you're being tracked and how to stop it, you can still keep your location cloak-and-dagger from the visitor. Adding a VPN to all that merely helps.