5 ms·

As I mentioned on the previous story about this, my phone checking where it is doesn't bother me. My phone sharing my location without me knowing does bother me

As I mentioned on the previous story about this, my phone checking where it is doesn't bother me. My phone sharing my location without me knowing does bother me. I'm far more bothered by the fact that my Roomba requests location data than I am this. Seriously Roomba, WTF.

p1necone 7y ago
Roomba's trying to get out of your house. Roomba wants to be a free vacuum cleaner.
m463 7y ago
Sometimes checking is sharing. I think there are ways to design APIs to be more private, but noone seems to do it. For instance, one way to figure out your time zone is to send your location to a server, which will return the time zone. Another more private way might be to load a list of location vs timezones for a region of the US, then calculate your timezone locally.
- morganherlocker 7y ago
  I implemented something like this a couple years ago and the geometry files used for timezone lookup were surprisingly large (~200 MB at decent precision)! I ended up simplifying the geometries drastically to minimize data requirements and compute burden of the lookups, but if you need higher precision, server reverse geocoding may be your only option in constrained environments.
  - m463 7y ago
    On the other hand, with my example the timezone data can be stored and used locally until you leave the region.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  On iOS, there is no way to do this. Every location request will ultimately send your location to Apple.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    No: you can get location from GPS entirely on-device.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      I never claimed you couldn't. I said that if you get your GPS location, iOS will send it to Apple, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. "By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services." It will also send your location to Apple when no app is requesting your location: "If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations." Unlike on Android, you cannot get your location without sending this data to Apple: "To use features such as these, you must enable Location Services on your iPhone" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        > I said that if you get your GPS location, iOS will send it to Apple, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Turn off networking. You can still get your location via GPS, but there is no way to send this back to Apple. > By enabling Location Services for your devices You seem to be confusing Location Services with location data. Location Services are the value adds mentioned in the support article, from which it's clear that they largely require sending your location to work.
        lern_too_spel 7y ago
        > Turn off networking. You can still get your location via GPS, but there is no way to send this back to Apple. Technically true, but this makes your iPhone a dumber dumb phone than it already is, and I doubt anybody would seriously use this mitigation. > You seem to be confusing Location Services with location data. You cannot get location data without enabling Location Services. "Location Services allows Apple and third-party apps and websites to gather and use information based on the current location of your iPhone or Apple Watch to provide a variety of location-based services. For example, an app might use your location data and location search query to help you find nearby coffee shops or theaters, or your device may set its time zone automatically based on your current location."
- faramarz 7y ago
  That's such an excellent point! Why do you think companies are not defaulting to this behavior? it feels like the right time to be working on closed-circuit software solutions as an alternative measure.
jrockway 7y ago
> Seriously Roomba, WTF. Isn't this a long-standing issue where Bluetooth access falls under the "location services" category because one can use the Bluetooth hardware to guess your location based on known beacons?

p1necone 7y ago

Roomba's trying to get out of your house. Roomba wants to be a free vacuum cleaner.

m463 7y ago

Sometimes checking is sharing. I think there are ways to design APIs to be more private, but noone seems to do it. For instance, one way to figure out your time zone is to send your location to a server, which will return the time zone. Another more private way might be to load a list of location vs timezones for a region of the US, then calculate your timezone locally.

morganherlocker 7y ago
I implemented something like this a couple years ago and the geometry files used for timezone lookup were surprisingly large (~200 MB at decent precision)! I ended up simplifying the geometries drastically to minimize data requirements and compute burden of the lookups, but if you need higher precision, server reverse geocoding may be your only option in constrained environments.
- m463 7y ago
  On the other hand, with my example the timezone data can be stored and used locally until you leave the region.
lern_too_spel 7y ago
On iOS, there is no way to do this. Every location request will ultimately send your location to Apple.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  No: you can get location from GPS entirely on-device.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    I never claimed you couldn't. I said that if you get your GPS location, iOS will send it to Apple, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. "By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services." It will also send your location to Apple when no app is requesting your location: "If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations." Unlike on Android, you cannot get your location without sending this data to Apple: "To use features such as these, you must enable Location Services on your iPhone" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > I said that if you get your GPS location, iOS will send it to Apple, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Turn off networking. You can still get your location via GPS, but there is no way to send this back to Apple. > By enabling Location Services for your devices You seem to be confusing Location Services with location data. Location Services are the value adds mentioned in the support article, from which it's clear that they largely require sending your location to work.
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        > Turn off networking. You can still get your location via GPS, but there is no way to send this back to Apple. Technically true, but this makes your iPhone a dumber dumb phone than it already is, and I doubt anybody would seriously use this mitigation. > You seem to be confusing Location Services with location data. You cannot get location data without enabling Location Services. "Location Services allows Apple and third-party apps and websites to gather and use information based on the current location of your iPhone or Apple Watch to provide a variety of location-based services. For example, an app might use your location data and location search query to help you find nearby coffee shops or theaters, or your device may set its time zone automatically based on your current location."
faramarz 7y ago
That's such an excellent point! Why do you think companies are not defaulting to this behavior? it feels like the right time to be working on closed-circuit software solutions as an alternative measure.

jrockway 7y ago

> Seriously Roomba, WTF. Isn't this a long-standing issue where Bluetooth access falls under the "location services" category because one can use the Bluetooth hardware to guess your location based on known beacons?