It seems that Google Chrome on Windows is able to determine my real location quite accurately, even when I’m connected to a VPN without any DNS, WebRTC, or any other kind of leak.
I noticed this when I installed the Momentum extension. I was quite surprised to see the name of the city I am actually located in along with the current weather after installing this extension, considering that I was connected to a VPN the whole time.
At first I thought there must be some kind of leak, so I checked all the major VPN leak testing sites:
No leaks were detected. Then, I notice that there is an icon in the address bar telling me that my location is being tracked when I open a new tab. My setting in Chrome is the default “ask when a site tries to access your physical location”. I guess extensions can bypass this setting and get your physical location without asking. When I changed the setting to “do not allow any site to track your physical location” then the problem was solved. The extension was no longer able to get my physical location.
I was curious how Chrome is getting my physical location when my computer does not have a GPS so I changed the setting back to ask my permission. Then I went to this site and allowed the site to access my location. The result was quite accurate, showing my location on a map within about 500 meters of my actual location.
After doing some research, my understanding is that my location is determined by other nearby WIFI networks. How does this work exactly? How can my physical location be determined by other nearby WIFI networks that I am not connected to?