Methods for securely and precisely determining the location of a user are described. The methods involve a situated device dock which is associated with an application and has a known physical location. The dock comprises a sensor to detect a user portable device in proximity to the dock and a module for communicating a session key to a proximate user portable device. The session key is known to a server and enables the user portable device to verify to the server that it is proximate to the device dock and therefore can be associated with the known physical location of the device dock. Based on the known location of the user portable device, functionality within an application or web application running on the device is enabled or disabled.