I have just noticed Firefox’s new widgets features that appear when you open a new blank tab. Some of these widgets include the weather and the time in different cities across the world.
The weather widget is showing the temperature in my VPN’s IP location which is good.
However, the time widget is showing my actual time zone. It’s showing different time zones, but it’s showing my time zone first, which I suspect is not coincidental.
Can others confirm if this is the same for you?
My Firefox configuration is likely different from yours, my homepage and new tabs are all blank pages.
That sounds like two different signals. The weather card can be based on the IP/VPN location, but the time widget can still use the browser/OS time zone exposed by JavaScript, so it is not surprising if your local zone appears first. It usually does not reveal a city by itself, but it can narrow things down. If you do not need the widgets, the simple option is a blank new tab/home page. Firefox’s resistFingerprinting can also normalize time zone behavior, but I would only use that knowingly because it can break or annoy normal sites.
I believe this is a new feature that is being rolled out progressively like Firefox VPN.
I did not enable it, and I can only see it in one of my FF profiles, and it’s the one that has Firefox VPN.
From a privacy company, it’s a litle bit creepy. I’ve had fingerpinting off on both my FF profiles for years, so that my timezone is not exposed to other sites. I am a little surprised that FF would reaveal it to me. Also, there are many cities that share the same time zone. For example, Panama City, New York city, and Miami are in the same time zone. Suppose I live in Miami. Firefox’s widget is showing me the correct time but also the correct city.
And although it is showing me multiple time zones across different countries and cities, the one that correspond to my city appears first, and my city is named.
It knows you time from system time. And i bet it is local, just like desktop widgets.
Actually, browser needs to know your exact time, because this is how TLS work. It has nothing to do with timezone reported to websites, though.