How to Hide Your Location when Broadcasting on Periscope

How To Hide Your Location On Periscope

Periscope is Twitter's new popular live broadcasting app. It's similar to a Youtube "Live Broadcast" or a live "Google Hangouts" session where in real time you talk and interact with your audience.

Periscope can be used for basically anything, but is especially useful for Q&A sessions, teaching an audience how to do something, or live broadcasting some kind of special event or breaking news.

With Periscope in it's infancy there's really no set or established way to use Periscope which makes it cool for early adopters as you can really do whatever you want.

Periscope is awesome but one feature some don't like is that it shows a detailed map of where you are broadcasting from. This isn't really a concern if broadcasting from a public place or some event, however if broadcasting from your home, many people have legitimate privacy and safety concerns about sharing their exact location with everyone on the internet.

Many have asked if there's any way to disable the location feature or at the very least show the city you are in but not show your exact location down to your street. There isn't a way to do that, however there is a way to trick your phone into thinking you are somewhere else with a GPS Spoofing App.

How to Hide your Location when Broadcasting on Periscope

How To Change Your Location When Broadcasting

If your broadcasting from home and are uncomfortable with your exact location being shared you can hide or at least change your location. To do this you will need to download a GPS Spoofing app. There's plenty of options on the app store. This will work for people with Android phones, however I've heard Apple and iPhones have the system so locked down you cannnot do this, so this may not work for iPhone users.

Once you download the GPS Spoofing app you will see a pin on a map. Drag it to where you would like your location to be.

Now before broadcasting I suggest you check and make sure the spoofing app really is working. You can do this by doing a Google search for a pizza place or restaurant. If you see stuff near you popping up it hasn't worked. If you see locations near where you chose your spoofed location to be then it is working. Simple enough right.

Now when you broadcast it will show the spoofed location you choose instead of your actual location.

Don't Lie About Your Location

My personal opinion is that you shouldn't lie about where your at. For example, if your in Omaha, Nebraska, don't say your in Hawaii. The cool thing about Periscope is you can watch or chat with people near you or people in a location you want to see. Don't abuse this trick I gave you by saying your in China when your in Chicago.

The reason I'm sharing this tip is because I do think it's understandable you don't want everyone on the internet to know your exact street.

Here's how I would suggest using the spoofing feature. Pick a spoof location that is a couple miles across town or even in a neighboring city. This way you are not being dishonest about where your Periscoping from, however at the same time you are protecting your privacy and safety by not showing everyone on Periscope literally what block you live on.