Hi Everyone,
I have an attendance app where user signs in from remote location, the location slider is used to get coordinates and those coordinates are send to find geo location, I have more 20 users where 19 users location is always correct however, one user location is always 300 km away from the actual location and the city is always same even 300km away, any idea like what is happening to it as its first time I am also getting to see that, the app is being operative over a year now.
Thanks
They are either using a device that does not have a GPS receiver, or they have location services disabled on their device, or they have disabled location for your specific app. It might be generalizing their location based on the the internet route or IP address of their cellular or internet provider rather than providing a precise GPS location.
Or they are not where they say they are…
is there any better way to grab the exact coordinates from the user, where he can’t submit the form without enabling the location
That’s the magic dilemma…especially with web based applications. Sometimes you have to deal with inaccurate coordinates due to device limitations, or restrictions that prevent access to sensor data on the device. It’s not an easy problem to solve. If I turn off location services on my phone, the best it can provide is maybe an estimate based on the WiFi or network it’s connected to, or the ip address. For example, depending on which cell tower I’m connected to at the moment, it sometimes thinks I’m either in one locaation about 200 miles away or another location about 400 miles away. Both in completely different states and direction compared to the current state that I live in.
On the flip side, it’s really easy to spoof a location. Spoofing can easily be done in a browser dev window, or by using a third party app that overrides the GPS sensor data.
Basically, using location alone is not a fool proof way to verify someone’s actual location. I assume your goal is to verify that a user is really at a specific location before they can submit a form saying they are at that location?
For starters, I would be using a custom form instead of a native form. That way if they use the location switch, you can measure distance to a known location and set the visibility of a submit button that adds a row if that distance is within tolerance. For non critical applications, that solution might be good enough. That will partially solve the problem, but if the user has some minor technical skill, they will easily know how to spoof that location.
Maybe there are other third party services that would work better for verifying location. It’s not something I’ve ever had to deal with before. Maybe you could do something with the Radar integration, but again it’s not something I’m overly familiar with. I guess my point is that maybe some third party services have a better way of determining the legitimacy of the coordinates being reported by the user.
I remember this discussion years ago and an alternative thought was a QR code at the location that they have to scan, but it would have to be a QR code that changes constantly. Or maybe a rotating code like you see with 2FA that is only visible on a terminal at the location. I don’t know. Just spit balling ideas. Then again, it’s easy for a friend to share a QR code with someone else too.
I don’t have any great thoughts off the top of my head. I think a native app could maybe handle the problem better, but with a web app, you are kind of stuck.
I can’t find the original conversation I was thinking of, but this one is similar.