Blah.com wants to track your physical location. Allow?

[Joe]

I often have lunch at a particular restaurant that has wifi. It is a restaurant chain with hundreds of locations throughout the country. When I go through the log in procedure, I get a pop up notice in my browser: "blah.com wants to track your physical location. Allow?"

What the heck is this all about? Why would they want to track my physical location? What will they do with this information? Should I allow them to track me?

 

[Blobbenstein]

they just want to target you with ads which might be more relevant if they know where you've been, probably.

Go to Walmart, you get Walmart ads.

 

[ledboots]

I often have lunch at a particular restaurant that has wifi. It is a restaurant chain with hundreds of locations throughout the country. When I go through the log in procedure, I get a pop up notice in my browser: "blah.com wants to track your physical location. Allow?"

What the heck is this all about? Why would they want to track my physical location? What will they do with this information? Should I allow them to track me?

I always say no to those.

 

[KLS52]

I always say no to those.

Same here.

 

[Andy_T]

I always say no to those.

Depends.

E.g., it might severely reduce the helpfulness of Google maps...

 

[Chryssie]

I would agree it depends on who is asking. If it is a locator of some sort, for stores or restaurants etc., I will "allow". Of course a map program would need your location to help you also.

 

[Calliegirl]

I always click "block". I only allow Google maps to know my location, for everything else I manually put in the location area (city or zip) I'm looking for.

 

[beancounter]

For my home PC (a desktop computer), I click "yes", just because everyone knows where I live anyway. I figure if the post office knows, the rest of the Gov't knows.

However, when I travel with a laptop or on my cell phone, I always say "No".