- NordVPN has released a new free browser tool
- “My Location” shows your physical location along with the virtual location
- The tool seeks to help users understand their digital privacy risks
Location data can give away far more than just which coffee shop you’re sitting in. It reveals the places you visit regularly, your daily routines and exactly when you’re away from home. To help users understand exactly what data they are sending out, the team behind one of the best VPN services has released a dedicated way to check.
NordVPN has officially launched My Location, a completely free online tool designed to let you instantly check both your physical location and the virtual location visible to the websites you visit. The tool works exclusively at the browser level and aims to demystify how different types of location data affect your digital privacy.
“Location is one of the most sensitive types of personal information because it can reveal where you are as well as patterns about your daily life,” says Marijus Briedis, CTO at NordVPN. “Once this data is exposed or shared too widely, it can be used for profiling, targeting and other purposes far beyond the original reason it was collected.”
Real vs. virtual location
One of the primary goals of the My Location tool is to educate users about the crucial difference between their real and virtual locations.
Your real location is located using device-based methods such as GPS or your browser’s geolocation API, which apps typically use when requesting access to your location.
Your virtual locationhowever, is based on the IP address associated with your online traffic. This is the data that websites rely on by default to assess where your connection originated from.
Why does this difference matter? Providing this information can lead to targeted advertising and regional price discrimination, where websites show you different prices based on your region. In more serious cases, a time-stamped location history can invite intrusive surveillance or stalking by making it easy to infer where you live and track how you move through daily life.
Using the tool is incredibly easy, but there is a specific step you should follow to protect your privacy.
When you navigate to the My Location page, you will see a button to test your location. If you’re using Google Chrome, clicking “Test” will trigger a browser alert asking, “Can I give NordVPN your location?” Besides this warning, Chrome will present you with three options: “Block”, “Just this time” or “Always”.
Users should choose “Just this once.” By doing this, you allow the Tool to use your browser’s geolocation API to determine your real physical location and map it to your IP-based virtual location for each session. Because you haven’t granted permanent access, the tool won’t automatically restart, keeping your long-term privacy intact.
The crucial thing is that you don’t have to worry about the provider watching you. NordVPN confirmed that the tool only works at the browser level and that it “does not log or store any location data revealed through its use.”
How to protect your location data
Beyond simply controlling what information is visible, it’s important to take active steps to lock down your data.
Briedis recommends a few simple hygiene habits for your devices. You should regularly review your app permissions and ensure that you only allow location access while you are actively using an app. Additionally, it is highly recommended to disable geotagging in your device’s camera settings and select privacy-friendly tools where possible.
Finally, while a virtual private network (VPN) will not mask GPS-based tracking, it is the best way to protect your virtual footprint. By routing your internet traffic through an encrypted server, a VPN changes the IP address visible to websites and ensures that your general browsing activity remains safely hidden.
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