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WiFi SSID has been behind a location permission gate on Android for several releases

• cdubzzz 7y ago
  It looks like this was released either in 8.x[0] or 9.x[1] series. Unclear to me which one. That means that only up to about 1/3 of Android devices[2] have the feature. Version distribution is one of the things that seems to tip stuff like this in favor in iOS[3]. Admittedly, the distribution of Android devices on 8.x+ is higher than I even expected before looking at this. [0] https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi-scan#wifi-scan-restrictions https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi... [1] https://developer.android.com/about/versions/pie/android-9.0-changes-all#restricted_access_to_wi-fi_location_and_connection_information https://developer.android.com/about/versions/pie/android-9.0... [2] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards [3] https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/ https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/
  • noisem4ker 7y ago
    Location access started being required for WiFi scans in Android 6.0 Marshmallow (2015). https://developer.android.com/about/versions/marshmallow/android-6.0-changes.html#behavior-hardware-id https://developer.android.com/about/versions/marshmallow/and... By eye, that covers nearly 75% of current devices.
    • cdubzzz 7y ago
      Thank you. I figured I was probably missing something on that point.
• boring_twenties 7y ago
  And yet "Phone status and identity" are somehow still one permission like a decade later. How on earth it occurred to someone in the first place, that determining whether the phone is in use or not and reading the phone #, IMEI, etc. should be the same permission is beyond me.