location-guard

Yeah. This can be a problem. The device-based IP geolocation, because the algo is so sensitive and the result can be altered with few devices behind the IP (at least for Google), can be used theoretically steering / trick big techs to believe that the IP is at location it is not, just like VPN providers in your article by publishing "bogon" geofeed etc. This defies their purpose of doing this in the first place: geolocking and regulatory requirements. The "tech" is already there: browser extensions [1] that overwrite the JS GeoLocation API to show "fake" locations to the website (designed for privacy purpose). also dongles are available on gray market that can be attached to iPhone / Android devices to alter the geolocation API result by pretending it is some kind of higher precision GPS device but instead providing bogon data to the OS.

I'm on the fence. While I think some of these features should be absolutely not part of a browser's scope, I think there will always be legitimate use cases. What I'm absolutely convinced of is for better controls. A little more than a year ago, our government required the banking industry to know their users' locations for some reason. So now the banks ask for my location, otherwise I can't login. While on a mobile device it would be quite hard to give them a fake location without rooting/jailbreaking, in my browser I could find a reputable, open source extension [1] that helps me protect my privacy. These kind of controls should be part of each of these features, without risking installing an extension with nefarious intent. 1: https://github.com/chatziko/location-guard