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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable

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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so

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smartphones are pretty great right when you're out looking for the nearest

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all-night dumpling house that handy-dandy gadget in your pocket can

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use gps satellites to triangulate your position and direct you to the nearest

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food fix but what about the times when you'd rather not have the powers that be

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tracking your location maybe while you're sitting at home on your pc you

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fire up a mapping site in your web browser and

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wait a minute this thing doesn't have gps but it knows where i am down to a

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few meters what black magic is this well

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part of the way your location can be determined is by looking at your public

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ip address which every site you visit needs so that it knows where to send the

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data you request now each isp owns a

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certain range of ip addresses that correspond to different geographic

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locations often the particular city that they then assign to customers and since

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these addresses are assigned to your isp by large registries who make location

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data public it's easy for most sites to know your general location assuming you

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aren't using a vpn or something like that but that still doesn't explain how

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google maps can place a blue dot directly on my house i mean did larry

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page's personal helicopter just fly over well no unless you're using a desktop pc

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that's a few years old you're on a device that probably supports wi-fi and

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if your wi-fi router has ever connected to or even just been in range of a gps

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enabled gadget like a smartphone this is some next level stuff right here that

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phone will actually take note of the mac addresses the unique identifiers for

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every network-enabled device of all the wireless access points that are close

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enough for them to see then it'll for that information along

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with the phone's location to a database maintained by google if you're on

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Android or apple if you're on iOS whoa so these companies know where a

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huge number of the access points and routers floating around out there are

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located even if they aren't public and if a router gets moved to a different

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location these databases will likely be updated the next time a phone connects

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to it now obviously this is hugely convenient for using services that need

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to know your location when you don't have a good gps signal not to mention

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that gps alone is a battery hog and takes a lot longer to triangulate your

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location than the wi-fi database but i can't say i'd blame you if you

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weren't concerned about these companies keeping tabs on where every wireless

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router lives even the one that sits on your countertop in your kitchen so is

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there any way to opt out of this well yes in theory it seems like every other

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week we found out that oops it turns out we were logging all that data you told

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us not to anyway lol sorry but anyway in

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theory microsoft and google allow you to keep your router out of their location

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databases for google you can add underscore no map to the end of your

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wi-fi network's name or ssid while microsoft offers a web page where you

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can enter your ap's Mac Address which you can usually find on an attached

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sticker but there doesn't appear to be a similar escape hatch for apple at this time go

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figure and if you want to keep your client devices for being tracked again

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in theory disable location or location services on Android or iOS and don't

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allow your browser to send your location to websites if you're on a desktop pc

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now they're typically configured to ask you first anyway but it's worth double

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checking because if you do send your location out even using a vpn may not

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help obscure where you are if your pc has a wi-fi connection that can see

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surrounding networks even if you're only using a wired connection at the time so

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make sure that you disable your wi-fi outright if you're concerned about

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others knowing where you are and speaking about others knowing where

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you are this episode has been brought to you by tunnelbear the easy to use vpn app when

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people are shopping for a vpn one of the features they look for are kill switches

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before you connect to a network your device starts to send information about

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itself and what it wants to do it tries to establish connections with all sorts

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of things and there are a bunch of other devices trying to connect to yours kill

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switches stop this from happening before you connect to your vpn all of your

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traffic is unencrypted so in the few seconds it takes to connect you've

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probably already broadcast your ip maybe a few dns requests or even a search

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query vigilant bear from tunnelbear stops this from happening by blocking

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all inbound and outbound traffic so nothing leaks out before you connect

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this helps keep you private throughout your entire connection time if your

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connection goes down for some reason vigilant bearer kicks back in and stops

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all outbound inbound traffic until the connection comes back for a free trial

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of tunnelbear go to tunnelbear.com Linus

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okay guys thanks for watching Techquickie like the video if you liked it dislike it if you didn't check out our

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other channels make sure to leave a comment below with video suggestions i do read those and your input is always

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very much appreciated and be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss

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any of our future videos