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   Steve Hill 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺 (steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jun-2026 20:48:54 JST Steve Hill 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺

   Hmm, this is a bit horrible. I have #TOR set up on my firewall to catch traffic to a few web sites and send it via not-UK exit nodes. Recently I have noticed some of those sites detecting that I am in the UK regardless, but only when I use my phone (even in Firefox in private browsing mode). I'm not *sure* but it looks like connections are going to socialuserlocation.googleapis.com, and if I send that via TOR I no longer seem to be detected as in the UK.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jun-2026 20:52:11 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @steve Are the sites embedding js from socialuserlocation.googleapis.com that snitches, or is the Android browser itself using the system location API built on socialuserlocation.googleapis.com to snitch to sites? The former would be blocked by UBO or another decent adtech blocker. The latter would be intentional malice built into whatever browser you're using.