Slightly unrelated but something amazing and terrifying happened two days ago. I moved about 6 months ago and I keep a separate OS (Windows) for mainly gaming.
When I was waiting for some updates to finish, I was browsing HN and came across a Show HN that shows you food places etc (https://www.justgetmefood.com/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17746497). Since I was on my gaming OS, I was not logged in to Google or any of my accounts, only Steam and some other non-important things.
I tried out the app, and it promptly showed me restaurants that were 20 minutes of walking distance, from my old place! Down to the street-number. Even though I never gave away the address on that operating system (also installed after the move actually). Somewhere along the pipes, Google picked up that this was me (IP probably?) but somehow mapped me to the old address.
Do you have multiple devices that connect to your router that could identify you?
Have you ever logged into any services like Google or use Google Search/YouTube/Maps on your gaming PC?
I still don't know if this is a Google thing. Browsers can share location and it may be possible that it's serving up the last known location because it can't provide the current one.
Hm, good thought but no. New ISP, new modem and new router. None of the existing network gear was moved together with me. However, the wifi name was reused to be the same. But, the computer I'm on doesn't have any wifi so it wouldn't be able to know.
When I was waiting for some updates to finish, I was browsing HN and came across a Show HN that shows you food places etc (https://www.justgetmefood.com/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17746497). Since I was on my gaming OS, I was not logged in to Google or any of my accounts, only Steam and some other non-important things.
I tried out the app, and it promptly showed me restaurants that were 20 minutes of walking distance, from my old place! Down to the street-number. Even though I never gave away the address on that operating system (also installed after the move actually). Somewhere along the pipes, Google picked up that this was me (IP probably?) but somehow mapped me to the old address.