The latest release of Google Chrome has geolocation enabled by default, and if you are worried about privacy or just don’t want websites to prompt you for your location, we’ve got the quick details on how to turn it off.
Readers should note that the new Geolocation feature doesn’t give out your details by default, so don’t panic. It’s also only active, at the time of this writing, in the Dev channel builds of Chrome—so if you are using the regular stable build this feature won’t arrive for a while anyway.
Note: If you’re a Firefox user, be sure to check out our guide to disabling geolocation in Firefox 3.x.
What’s this Geolocation Feature About?
Geolocation is a way for your browser to tell a website about your physical location, so you can get results tailored to where you actually are—for example, if you visited Google Maps it can ask you for your location to give you an accurate picture of where you are.
To use this feature in Google Maps, you would click on the small white icon to activate the feature.
As soon as you have clicked on the small white icon, a thin green toolbar will appear at the top of the webpage, asking to Allow or Deny.
How to Turn Chrome’s Geolocation Off
If you want to turn geolocation off you will need to open the “Chrome Options Window”, navigate to the third tab, and click on the “Content settings… ” button.
When the “Content Settings Window” opens go to the “Location Tab” and select “Do not allow any site to track my physical location”. Once that is done close out the “Content Settings & Chrome Options Windows”.
When you go back to Google Maps and try using the small white icon again this is the message that you will see at the top of the page. Now that is much better!
If you are unhappy with geolocation being enabled by default in the latest Dev Channel release then this will help get the problem sorted out nicely.
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