More on Browsing Privacy - Location-Aware Browsing

Maybe y'all know about this and it's just me who's been in the dark, but are you familiar with Location-Aware Browsing?  I became aware of it because I use an IP redirection and masquerading service to conceal my real IP address and I was astonished recently to see my *real* geographic area show up in a web page, despite using the redirector.  At first I was sure I had accidentally forgotten to turn on the application that masquerades my IP, but having consulted several online IP privacy services I am confident that my real IP address was being properly masqueraded and shown to be coming from a completely different city and state.  

So how did these sites know where I was located?  Location-Based Browsing!  I just learned that the browser I use, Mozilla Firefox, will by default use Google Location Services to announce to interested websites my real geographic location, city and state (actually latitude/longitude as accurately as it can).  I understand that other location-aware browsers also use this feature.  In the referenced hyperlink are instructions for how to turn this off in Firefox, but the capability is quietly turned on (opt-in) by default.  That is to say, while browsing, you are not necessarily informed that your private location information is volunteered to the website by your browser.  The Firefox page linked to below reports that in some cases, your location can be determined to within a few meters.  

Although I've never been prompted by Firefox to share location information, because of the way the application is ordinarily configured, the browser behaves as if it has blanket approval to share.  That is to say, the default configuration for the browser is to have this turned on and that is interpreted as your permission.  The only way I've found to disable that behavior is to follow the directions on the link below for "How do I turn off Location-Aware Browsing permanently?"  This is a bit misleading.  The procedure doesn't turn it off permanently, but instead turns off blanket approval for all locations requests from websites until you explicitly reconfigure the browser to re-enable Location-Aware Browsing, a very simple procedure.  Needless to say, I turned this off.  

If we had a TER Privacy and Security general board I would have put this post in there.