GeoLocater : Spoof Your GeoLocation in Mozilla Firefox

More and more websites are using the location aware browsing technology to present to you information relevant to your geographical location (in short geolocation). For example, if you are searching for pizza, then websites would automatically show pizza stores located near you. On social networking sites like Facebook, you can post your status in combination with your geographical location showing all your friends where you are. For this location aware browsing, these websites rely on your geolocation supplied by your browser. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, then you can easily spoof your geolocation using the GeoLocater add-on for Firefox. Here is how :

You can visit the Mozilla add-on website to install the GeoLocater add-on for Firefox. The add-on requires you to restart your web browser, so you can use it only after restarting it. After the installation and restarting your Firefox browser, you can start using it. First of all you have to add a new geolocation. For this, open the GeoLocater management from Firefox → GeoLocater → Manage as shown. If you have enabled the menubar in Firefox, then you have to choose Tools → GeoLocater → Manage from the menubar.

Spoof your GeoLocation in Firefox

The GeoLocater Management interface opens up in a new tab. It shows a map of world powered by Open Street Maps. You can zoom in or out using various buttons in the toolbar at the top of the map. To add a new geolocation, click on the red colored Create GeoLocation button in the upper-right corner as shown.

Spoof your GeoLocation in Firefox

This would open a search box, where you can type in a location name and search it on the the map. I searched for New York, NY, USA and it was zoomed in on the map. You can further refine your location by zooming in, moving and other methods. Once you have found the proper location you want to spoof, click on the switch-to-select button on the top-right as shown.

Spoof your GeoLocation in Firefox

This would open a form where you can edit the geolocation information, its name and address. You can also adjust the accuracy of geolocation by sliding the accuracy slider from left to right. Then click on the Save edition button on the top-right corner to save this location. You can add as many geolocations in this manner as you want. If you add multiple geolocations, make sure that the names of these geolocations are not conflicting.

Spoof your GeoLocation in Firefox

After you have added a spoofed geolocation, you can close the GeoLocater management interface. To switch to a spoofed geolocation, click on the Firefox → GeoLocater and then choose a spoofed geolocation from the list. Now whenever a website requests your geographical location, Firefox would simply forward this spoofed geolocation making it believe that you are physically located at that location. If later you want to turn off spoofing and use your actual geolocation, then you can select Google Service from the geolocation list.

Spoof your GeoLocation in Firefox

So if you want to play pranks on your family and friends on Facebook or just want to find stores located in a particular area, then you can try spoofing your geolocation in Firefox using the GeoLocater add-on. Its a great prank for the April Fools Day to put a Facebook status message from a far off spoofed location. You can download and install it from the Firefox add-ons page at https://addons.mozilla.org/.