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Surely the solution is to turn off Ultra Wideband technology until you provide your location: not to force you to divulge your location and then "switch it off"

Surely the solution is to turn off Ultra Wideband technology until you provide your location: not to force you to divulge your location and then "switch it off" after you've done so... The original article seems not to link to the actual wording of their reasoning (and I couldn't find it with a quick browse), but I'm guessing they require a location to ensure that they are licensed to give you the specific content in your area. My opinion: have it fail if they need a location to serve the content and don't have the location. Personally, I think it's pretty stupid anyway since it's hardly impossible to spoof the location on these devices. At some level, you are required to trust the consumer that they are telling the truth. Given that, why not just ask the costumer what country they are in and cut off the service for customers who are obviously lying? Put in your terms of service that you can use it through TOR or other anonymising services that will obfuscate the route of the packets being sent. I mean, I can think of half a dozen other potential solutions to the problem. They picked one and don't want to think of any other solution. I think it is fair for consumers to judge them on their lack of flexibility on this issue.

NoPicklez 7y ago
The idea with Ultra Wide Band is that it is meant to be always on, much like WiFi or Bluetooth if you choose to have it on listening all the time. So if the user wants to have Ultra Wide Band on all the time are you saying that they should ask the user to provide their location, then just assume that they will never leave their country? How do you detect if they have left the country to a location where Ultra Wide Band is restricted? The wording is right there in the article in the title. "Gathering the approximate location of your Sonos system allows us to auto-populate your registration postal code and predetermine the radio locale for your system so it is configured as soon as you are done setting up your system." You're right, you could do that however in the context of user experience you might choose to remove that from the application such that the user is able to register their devices faster. And if you really only need and use that information during the setup as they said, then what's the problem? With regards to spoofing, if it is correct that they need the locale in order to know whether they can serve that location. And they implement a location check to satisfy that, then if the end user spoofs the location, surely Sonos don't care because they've done their due diligence. If you choose to spoof the location that's a different story, Sonos if they could would provide the service to everyone its the licensing companies that tell where they can. My opinion, if you are required to obtain the location of the user as part of the setup process due to determining the radio locale. And you do so only during the setup process as you have stipulated on your website, then I don't think its that big of a deal. Either way I'd have to provide my location using a drop down menu and for the end user its just one part of the overall setup process that is done for you.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  Just to be clear, there is a huge difference between saying I'm in Japan (which I am happy to shout out to anybody) and saying exactly where I am to a precision of a few meters. What I'm saying is that they need to provide tools that allows the user to specify the former (which I'm pretty sure they can determine without even asking their user's device) without specifying the latter. The reason they want the latter is because they can easily get it and once they have it, it is valuable for other reasons. For Ultra Wide Band it's even easier because the actual phone manufacturer has control over the dang thing. Got an active SIM connection in an allowed country? Good to go. Even building your GPS system such that it can determine if it is in a UWB allowed country without divulding where it is would be absolutely trivial. I really can go on and on with potential solutions that do not divulge a user's positions. They just don't care about the user's privacy. That's the entire point.

NoPicklez 7y ago

The idea with Ultra Wide Band is that it is meant to be always on, much like WiFi or Bluetooth if you choose to have it on listening all the time. So if the user wants to have Ultra Wide Band on all the time are you saying that they should ask the user to provide their location, then just assume that they will never leave their country? How do you detect if they have left the country to a location where Ultra Wide Band is restricted? The wording is right there in the article in the title. "Gathering the approximate location of your Sonos system allows us to auto-populate your registration postal code and predetermine the radio locale for your system so it is configured as soon as you are done setting up your system." You're right, you could do that however in the context of user experience you might choose to remove that from the application such that the user is able to register their devices faster. And if you really only need and use that information during the setup as they said, then what's the problem? With regards to spoofing, if it is correct that they need the locale in order to know whether they can serve that location. And they implement a location check to satisfy that, then if the end user spoofs the location, surely Sonos don't care because they've done their due diligence. If you choose to spoof the location that's a different story, Sonos if they could would provide the service to everyone its the licensing companies that tell where they can. My opinion, if you are required to obtain the location of the user as part of the setup process due to determining the radio locale. And you do so only during the setup process as you have stipulated on your website, then I don't think its that big of a deal. Either way I'd have to provide my location using a drop down menu and for the end user its just one part of the overall setup process that is done for you.

mikekchar 7y ago
Just to be clear, there is a huge difference between saying I'm in Japan (which I am happy to shout out to anybody) and saying exactly where I am to a precision of a few meters. What I'm saying is that they need to provide tools that allows the user to specify the former (which I'm pretty sure they can determine without even asking their user's device) without specifying the latter. The reason they want the latter is because they can easily get it and once they have it, it is valuable for other reasons. For Ultra Wide Band it's even easier because the actual phone manufacturer has control over the dang thing. Got an active SIM connection in an allowed country? Good to go. Even building your GPS system such that it can determine if it is in a UWB allowed country without divulding where it is would be absolutely trivial. I really can go on and on with potential solutions that do not divulge a user's positions. They just don't care about the user's privacy. That's the entire point.