Don’t want POF to track your location the whole time? You may wonder how to hide your location on POF when you want to, is there an option? Or do I have to live with POF’s automatic location tracking? In this post, we’ll show you the trick of hiding (faking) your location when you’re active on POF.
Whether it’s a casual fling or a lifetime thing, apps like POF are a major part of the dating world, and if you are serious about finding love, you’re going to want a solid presence on these apps.
Location is a key part of how POF works. It needs to know where you are so it can provide you with potential matches in your area. If it didn’t know where you are, it could potentially show you matches hundreds or thousands of miles away. That won’t help you find a date and could put you off using the app.
POF Location
POF uses GPS on your device to pinpoint your location, and when disabled, uses information from both your router and your ISP to pinpoint where you are in the world. There is a legitimate safety concern when you give your location away on a dating app.
If you live in a small town or rural area, having a match two miles away could instantly give you away. Depending on who else lives in that town, that could be a good thing, or it might be the opposite.
According to POF dating, if you turn these features on, when you use your mobile, we will collect information about WiFi access points as well as other location information about your longitude and latitude and may save your device’s coordinates to offer certain features to you.
This information helps us identify your physical location, and we may use it to personalize the App and make it easier for you to interact with other Users, by enabling the information to be displayed and shared with other members choosing to view nearby posts.’
Essentially users who want to protect their location privacy may want to forego the app. But, we do have some tips and tricks to help you.
If you’re curious about what you can do to control your location, this section is for you. While you can’t necessarily suppress your location you can fix problems you’re having or spoof your location.
Contact Support
If you want to suppress your location because you’re having an issue or something is wrong with the app, there are some options for you as well. Of course, you can always try to update the application. But, your next course of action may be to contact POF’s Support team. State the issue and include a screenshot if you can.
Check Your Date & Time
If your location is wrong, on your mobile device, be sure that your Time and Date are updating properly. Although it may seem completely unrelated, this can cause issues with locations and how your apps work.
Whether you’re using an iPhone or Android, open the Settings on your phone and type ‘Date & Time’ into the search bar. Now, toggle the switch so that your phone will automatically update the date and time
The next option isn’t exactly POF-approved so tread lightly. If you want POF to show your location in another place entirely, and it isn’t a glitch; you can always spoof your phone’s GPS location.
If you’re using an iPhone, this article will help you to spoof your location. You can use tools, a Gfaker device, or some other method depending on what you’re comfortable with.
Android users can follow the steps listed here. As long as you can enable your Developer Options and download a GPS spoofing app, it’s really simple to spoof your location. Set your location to anywhere you feel necessary then open the POF app.
How to Hide Location On POF
Here’s how to do it:
Using Android Device:
1. Log in to your account and scroll to your Settings menu and select Apps from the list of options.
2. Locate POF in your full list of apps.
3. Select Permissions from the app options.
4. Select Location and Deny permission.
Using iOS Device:
1. Sign in to your account, open Settings, and navigate to your POF options.
2. Select Location Services within the POF settings menu.
3. Choose the option for Never or Ask Next Time. Meaning it won’t have access to your location without your permission.
If you’d like to be a little more open to sharing your location tap the ‘Ask Next Time’ option. This means that your phone will pop up an alert when you open POF and you can select whether you’d like to share your location at that time.
Can You Hide Location On POF?
You can’t hide your location on POF once it’s located on the app. Since POF uses GPS if it’s turned on, or Wifi signals if it’s not.
Your location will be automatically established by your phone’s GPS and cannot be set manually. If you believe your location is incorrect, please contact our Support team so we can update our geo-database!
Can POF Track Your Location If You Are Not Active?
No, POF can only track your location if you log into the app. No app updates your location in the background, or at least it isn’t legally allowed to. Our article on how POF tracks your location goes into more detail.
Can You Fake Your Location On POF?
It is possible to fake your location on POF in multiple different ways. First, you could change your wifi settings, use a VPN, or use a GPS spoofing app. There are more details on how you can do that, and how that works in the next section. You can also change your search distance in POF if you’ve exhausted the resources closest to you.
How to Fake Your Location In POF on iPhone & Android
POF will use your GPS first and WiFi settings second when trying to set your location. This means that you can potentially fake a location. By turning GPS off and using a VPN service, you can select an endpoint server in a city you want to appear to be in. It isn’t the slickest solution to those small-town dating woes but might help.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN has a list of the locations of their servers, so you should be able to check before you buy. You will also have a free trial of between 7 and 14 days so you can try before you buy. It’s an inelegant way to spoof your location but could work.
There are also GPS spoofing apps on the market that can fake your POF location. Dating apps are becoming wise to these and block some of them. I often suggest these apps for faking locations but have to be much more careful now as not all of them work. You could try a GPS spoofing app on your phone to see if you can manually set a location.
Location is one of the important features of dating apps, and you may find it difficult to turn location off. There are ways around that as described here, but none are guaranteed to work because the app developers are continually moving the goalposts. It’s always worth a try, though.