The Intrusive Pop-Ups
When you visit a local retail website or a weather forecasting service in Google Chrome, the website’s Javascript will almost always attempt to pinpoint your physical location. Before handing over this highly sensitive GPS and IP data, Chrome intercepts the request and throws a prompt from the URL bar asking, “Know your location?” While this security check is critical, the sheer volume of websites asking for this permission is exhausting. If you have absolutely no intention of ever sharing your physical location with any website, you can instruct Chrome to implement an absolute, global ban on all location requests.
How to Turn Off Location Prompts
You can permanently revoke the browser’s permission to ask for your location via the site settings.
- Open the Google Chrome desktop browser.
- Click the three vertical dots (⋮) in the top right corner and select Settings.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Privacy and security.
- In the main window, click on Site settings.
- Under the “Permissions” header, click on Location.
- At the very top of the screen, under “Default behavior,” select the radio button next to “Don’t allow sites to see your location.”
Absolute Privacy
The change is instantaneous. If a website attempts to run a script to locate your coordinates, Google Chrome will immediately and silently kill the script. The browser will never again interrupt your reading with a pop-up prompt asking for location access. You will browse the web in complete privacy, and the websites will simply have to assume you are in their default service area.