
Remembered Location
I have Privacy & Security set to Strict with Cookies and Site Data deleted when the browser is closed with only 3 sites in the exclusion tab. I also use a VPN to assist with masking and for connections to defined systems and as part of that I will randomly set it to different countries 'because I can'.
I was looking at the website for the current Rugby World Cup (https://www.rugbyworldcup.com) but it was showing the wrong times for the matches. A little digging showed it had remembered my location from some point last week when the VPN was active and set to Iceland.
There is nothing I can find in my browser settings to permit this and I would appreciate pointers to check further since one of the reasons I have set the higher level of restrictions in my browser is to stop this kind of activity from websites.
All Replies (3)
Does it still think your location is Iceland if you manually clear the cookies (again) and revisit the site?
I have tried a manual Clear Data (using the Everything setting in When) but it has made no difference. Oddly even on a clean power up/browser start there is 1.2MB of temporary cached files/pages and I cannot identify what is creating that since I have removed all websites from any exceptions and my other laptop with apparently the same settings shows 77kb.
I am presuming it thinks I am in Iceland but the site which showed the location was for the Rugby World Cup which has now finished. The Formula1.com site and the Cricinfo sites show 'My Time' as the same one hour different.
That's weird, I'm not sure why the website would still be showing your old location. Here are a few questions I would like to ask for more information: Does the website still use the same time zone if you view it in a new Firefox profile? What about a different browser? Do you have this issue with other websites not on your exception list? I suspect that this could be an example of browser fingerprinting, where websites can identify users based on characteristics of the users' software and hardware without needing IP or cookies from previous sessions.