You turned off Location Services, but the booking site still knew your town. That’s the address setting your holiday prices.

“Hi, Kim, You were talking about how your friend got a cheaper rental car by going to the same site but using a VPN. I started thinking, do most retailers and airlines do the same thing? This does not seem fair.” — Allison in Salt Lake City

This is important, Allison, especially now in the booking season. Holiday flights, the gift list, a hotel for the in-laws.

Every one of those sites wants to know where you’re sitting. Not out of curiosity.

🎁 Wrapped in your ZIP code

Retailers price by market. Same sweater, same website, different number in Scottsdale than in Scranton. NordVPN’s researchers found that what an American gets charged online shifts with location and browsing history.

How do they know, when you switched your location off months ago?

• Your IP address does the heavy lifting. Every connection has one, your provider assigns it and it maps to a city the way a return address maps to a neighborhood. No permission requested. No toggle to flip. 
• Then the small tells stack. Time zone, language, screen size, fonts, operating system version. Each one meaningless alone. Together, they narrow the field fast. 
• Phones add a layer. An app with location permission doesn’t only ask the satellites. It reads the names of Wi-Fi networks in range and matches them against a database of where those routers sit. That’s how your phone finds you inside a mall where GPS hasn’t got a prayer.
• Then there’s what you handed over yourself. The ZIP typed for shipping. The “my store” you picked in 2019. Those never expire.

✈️ Fare warning

Three moves before you book anything.

1. See what they see. Go to “What is my IP?” and look at the city it prints. That’s the opening guess. Downside: None, but don’t panic if it names a town 20 miles off. That’s your provider’s routing, not proof you’re safe.
2. Cut precise location. iPhone: Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services, tap the app, turn off Precise Location. Android: Settings > Location > App location permissions. Downside: This one stings. Turn it off for Maps, and your turn-by-turn directions get sloppy. Weather gives you the region instead of your street. Rideshare apps can’t find your curb, and Find My gets vague right when you need it most. Do it app by app, not all at once.
3. Block browser requests. Chrome: Settings > Privacy and security > Site settings > Location > Don’t allow. Downside: “Stores near me” stops working, so restaurant and pharmacy searches will ask you to type your ZIP every time. Store pickup and curbside checkout may not autofill either.

🦸 My pro move

Route your connection somewhere else, so your IP stops announcing you on every click.

That’s what a VPN does, and I use NordVPN. It’s the official VPN of my show, and here’s why it’s the one on my phone, my laptop and my TV:

• Shop from anywhere. Over 9,300 servers in 137 countries, so you can compare the same flight or the same sweater from three different markets in about a minute.
• One account, the whole family. 10 devices at once. Your phone, a laptop, the iPads, TV, all covered on one subscription.
• It blocks the fake sites before you land on them. Nord checks around 12 million web addresses a day and blocks roughly 130,000 malicious pages, which matters most when every text claims a package is waiting.
• Nobody’s watching what you shop for, including them. No-logs policy, independently audited six years running. Panama headquarters, outside the reach of US and EU data-sharing agreements.
• Fast enough that you forget it’s on. No spinning wheel while a cart loads, no buffering on movie night.
• Airport and hotel Wi-Fi stop being a gamble. Traveling for the holidays means logging into networks you’d never trust at home.
• 30-day money-back guarantee. Try it. If you don’t love it, get your money back.

That’s about the price of one gift-wrap roll, for two years and four months of not being the easiest target in the ZIP code.

Every site knows exactly what town I’m in. Meanwhile, I circle the mall parking lot for 20 minutes looking for my car.

🎯 Send this to someone who is buying gifts and booking holiday flights this year.