How does my browser know my location

I'm from the UK but I live in the Middle East. It's a real pain sometimes trying to access my UK-based services from a Middle Eastern IP address and so I've taken some steps to hide my location but somehow websites know...!?

This is everything I can think of...

  • I use a UK VPN
  • using whatismyipaddress I have checked that I am seen as being located in the UK
  • Also using whatismyipaddress I have verified that my real IP address is not being leaked via WebRTC (I have the WebRTC Network Limiter app installed in my browser)
  • I reject third party cookies
  • All cookies are cleared when I close down my browser
  • I have Javascript disabled on all sites by default (I only enable it on sites that I trust if they require javascript to run properly)
  • I am using Google DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4)
  • My browser user agent is set to 'en-us'
  • My browser has access to 'Location' disabled
  • I have set my Windows 10 timezone to UTC +00:00 (London)
  • My Windows country/region is set to United Kingdom
  • My installed languages in Windows are English (UK) and English (US)

Yet somehow Facebook always loads in Arabic (until I log in). And Google always loads in Arabic (https://www.google.ae). If I go to http://ift.tt/2rO9th4 it thinks that I am located in Dubai (I am not in Dubai but it is suspiciously close to my location).

I understand it's possible for websites to detect that a proxy is being used, but loading pages in Arabic seems to suggest that other information is being leaked somehow.

Any ideas?



Submitted August 31, 2017 at 07:07PM by gegesgesgesgesg http://ift.tt/2eHm1C4

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