> Any program on your computer can ask your wireless card to enumerate the nearby networks. This causes it to go into “polling mode,” where it spends less time

> Any program on your computer can ask your wireless card to enumerate the nearby networks. This causes it to go into “polling mode,” where it spends less time transmitting data and more time listening for routers advertising their network info Except for the Wi-Fi widget I click on when I want to choose Wi-Fi network, what software needs this access? I can think of two use cases: - A Wi-fi diagnostics application. - Data collection to co-relate Wi-Fi networks and locations. I don't see why the OS doesn't simply refuse going into to polling except for white listed applications, because out of the box there is only one application that needs to ask for polling (my wi-fi widget) and I don't care if Google Maps wants to geo-tag the wifi in my surroundings, so just give it the list from the last whitelisted poll. And if I need a Wi-Fi diagnostic tool, then I am an advanced enough user to figure out how to white list it.