What is my address?
This is the closest a browser gets to a street address, and it is still an inference. Your device reports a point; a map database names whatever it has nearest that point. It is not read from an account, a form you once filled in, or your device's contact card, none of which a website can reach.
Your browser will ask before sharing anything. Nothing is uploaded.
Your approximate address can be shown above once you allow location access. When you press the button and accept the prompt, your browser fixes your coordinates and this page looks them up with a public reverse-geocoding service, OpenStreetMap Nominatim, to resolve the nearest street address.
This is the most sensitive item in the Location group, so it is worth being clear about the flow: the address is only ever looked up after your explicit consent, the result is displayed to you locally, and your coordinates go only to the public geocoding service that resolves them, never to us. We do not log or store them. If you deny permission, nothing is read.
Reverse geocoding is an approximation. It returns the closest matching address for your coordinates, which is usually spot on outdoors but can drift indoors or in areas with sparse mapping data. Think of it as "the address at roughly this point" rather than a guaranteed exact match.
How a website reads this
This is the exact call a page makes. Nothing else is involved, and nothing is sent anywhere: the value is read in your browser and displayed to you.
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition then a reverse geocodeCoordinates in, a formatted address out. The result is the nearest thing the map database knows about, which in a dense city is usually the right building and in the countryside can be a road name several hundred metres away.
- Needs your permission
- Yes, your browser asks first
- Can it be faked
- Yes. Follows the coordinates.
- Contribution to a fingerprint
- Not counted. Not part of the fingerprint estimate: consent-gated. How we estimate this.
What reverse geocoding returns, and how far off it can be
The lookup does not know your address. It knows a point, and names the nearest thing the map database has to that point. The gap between those two ideas is the whole story.
| Where you are | What typically comes back | How far it can be off |
|---|---|---|
| A dense city street | The correct building, or its immediate neighbour | A few metres to a couple of doors |
| An apartment block | The building, never the flat. Floors and unit numbers are not in the data | Correct building, no vertical information at all |
| A business park or campus | The site or the nearest named entrance rather than the unit | Tens to hundreds of metres |
| A rural road | The road name and the nearest settlement, often with no house number | Hundreds of metres to a kilometre |
| Indoors with no satellite fix | Whatever is nearest the wifi-derived point, which may be the building next door | Depends entirely on the accuracy radius reported with the coordinates |
None of this comes from an account, a delivery history or your device's own contact card. A website cannot reach any of those. It has a point and a map, and everything else is inference.
Where the coordinates go, and where they stop
Turning a point into a street name needs a map database, and no map database runs in your browser. So this is the one place on the site where a value you consented to share leaves your device: the coordinates go to OpenStreetMap Nominatim, a public geocoding service.
They are relayed through this site's own endpoint rather than sent directly, for a specific reason. Nominatim's usage policy requires requests to identify the application making them, and untagged browser traffic can get an entire domain blocked. The relay adds that identification and nothing else: it does not log, store or forward anything, and it passes only the two numbers the lookup needs.
Nothing else about you goes with them. Not your IP address as far as the geocoder is concerned, not your user agent, and certainly not any of the other signals on this site. If you never press the button, this request never happens at all.
What you should know
Why sites collect it
Delivery, ride-hailing, field services and check-out flows use your address to route goods and people to you. A legitimate site requests it only at the moment it is needed and only after you act.
Privacy implications
A full address is among the most identifying pieces of data you can share, effectively pointing at your front door. That is why it sits behind a permission prompt and why you should give it out sparingly. Here it is derived from consented coordinates, shared only with a public geocoding service and never with us, so you decide if it is read at all.
How to change or hide it
Deny the location prompt to skip this, and revoke access later in your browser's site settings. When a site genuinely needs your address, prefer typing it yourself so you control exactly what is stored, rather than granting broad location access.
Frequently asked questions
Is my exact address really detectable?
Only with your permission, and only approximately. Consented GPS coordinates reverse-geocode to the nearest address, which is usually close but not guaranteed exact.
Do you send my address anywhere?
We never see it. Your consented coordinates go to a public reverse-geocoding service (OpenStreetMap Nominatim) that resolves the address, and the result is shown to you locally. We do not receive, log or store your coordinates or your address.
Sources
Browser behaviour changes and vendors cap these values differently, so the claims above that are not self-evident are checked against the specifications and vendor documentation below.
Last checked on . How these values are measured and estimated is set out on the methodology page.
Something wrong here? Tell us what your browser reports and it gets corrected.