Why does my phone think I live in Houston, TX?

[mikewhitney]

does google maps show your location properly?

You may want to see if there is a location provider plugin for your browser. I'm just searching stuff on the web.


Maybe your location settings are configured in the disabled state on your phone.

[QuantaFille]

I almost always have GPS turned off. When it's on, Google maps knows where I am pretty accurately. If I'm not using maps, I turn it off because Google maps knows where I am and will pester me to leave reviews for all the places I just stopped at to run errands. It's maddening, lol. Does my browser use my GPS location to find local ads to show me? Seems to me that if it can't access the primary method of finding my location, it would use a different method instead of taking a wild guess and landing on a city hundreds of miles away.

[mikewhitney]

You can try turning GPS on and then access some websites that would check your location.

I believe the location feature of the phone will check ip location, gps, cell-phone tower location, and maybe a fixed location in your phone.

a website then may be accessing some best value or combined/merged location.

[Cerebrum123]

Shouldn't my IP address be local? Houston, TX is nowhere near local.

Mine has shown up in Ohio before, and I don't live there.

[DesertBerean]

I have occasionally had location reported as elsewhere ... but only once out of state mear as I can recall. But my weather service lately has defaulted to Big Bear or Minneota. Not sure why.