Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Geeky stuff

Can someone see my location if I accessed their website through my phone?

5 replies

Katlow · 10/12/2019 08:30

So, I accessed someones website last night through my phone,
I'm wondering whether the person who owns that laptop will be able to see my location from where I accessed it from and how general will it be?
Only concerned as I've had to report it due to my job and they are my friend and I'm scared that they're going to know it was me even though I know I did the right thing :(

OP posts:
Gronky · 10/12/2019 20:00

Sorry for the long, complicated message, it's very hard to give a precise answer without the specifics. I'm happy to explain anything you'd like to be clarified.

If it's their personal website :

Assuming you were using mobile data, they'll be able to see that someone who uses your mobile network accessed their website (assuming they have IP logging enabled). I'm not certain for every mobile network but Three and O2 IP addresses aren't localised so that won't immediately tell them your location. IP addresses are frequently swapped between phones on mobile networks as different devices connect and disconnect, which frustrates attempts to localise them. Various providers use data gathered from other sources to try to approximate the location of a specific address and looking up your current address on an 'IP geolocation' service will let you see how close the providers are (my IP showed a variety of places I haven't visited).

However, if they suspect you accessed their site and wanted to confirm it, there is a risk that your phone retains the same IP address for a longer period of time so, by using certain attacks (both ones you might see/have to act on and ones you don't), they could potentially send you a message (through email/SMS/instant messaging) which effectively causes your phone to contact their server again, linking that IP address (and the previous one if it's unchanged) to the original hit on their site.

Unless they're running an extremely unusual setup, the site won't be hosted (where your phone goes to retreive the site contents) on their laptop, as that would require the laptop to be running at all times. It will more likely be hosted on a server but, if they have IP logging, they will be able to retreive the log in the same fashion.

If it's a social media page :

You're almost certainly safe from the above (though they could have gone to specific lengths to still record hits, but this is unlikely and difficult to implement). However, if you were logged into your profile, improper privacy settings on certain sites may allow them to see that you've accessed their page.

In either case :

It's possible for certain authorities to get a list of the sites you've visited (though this is just the addresses, whatyou specifically look at is harder to access and the precise details of whether it's retained automatically for everyone or only recorded after a request has been filed isn't publicly disclosed).

cdtaylornats · 10/12/2019 21:49

Your phone knows its location via GPS and depending on settings that can be obtained

Tessaraqt · 10/12/2019 22:01

Yes, I think so.

I'm not techy but two things that make me think it is;

  1. I bought an item online from a small business hundreds of miles away, and wore it. Small business contacted me a couple of days later to say thank you as they had guessed I had been wearing it/raving about it, as they had an influx of website visitors based in my area.
  2. my exH had a website hosted through "godaddy", and it provided monthly reports which showed the area website visitors came from.
PinglePongle · 10/12/2019 22:13

You can usually see City but not anything more specific

ItsChristmaaaaaaaaas · 10/12/2019 22:17

It depends what they are using to track visits! Our 2 systems can’t pinpoint mobile device locations. Google analytics can tell you roughly where (ie what city) but not who.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page