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Interesting! But also really speaks to the need for a browser setting for very coarse location without requiring user entry. Eg, I always block location API ac
by bfdm 3y ago
Interesting! But also really speaks to the need for a browser setting for very coarse location without requiring user entry.
Eg, I always block location API access, and sites often have poor fallback UI for entry.
If it'd let me, I'd be setting my browser to always report "Toronto, Ontario" and auto-deny location requests.
- gabereiser 3y agoThat ship has sailed. Location data is vital to a lot of internet services now. GeoIP fencing is one thing but location fencing is a tech that is being used by every major government (despite them outcrying privacy concerns). I wish it wasn’t like this but until the open web becomes the “transparent” web, the snooping, spying, logging, graph-identity-building, MarTech driven, web will continue to go towards walled gardens and deanonymizing the internet.
- hackmiester 3y agoAnd yet if you want your app to be listed on the iPhone App Store, it must be equally functional if the user denies location. So, I always do it, and have no problems, although sometimes it is slightly more annoying to use the app.
- bombcar 3y agoAlmost any non-mapping application for location is just as well served by “zip-code”.
- Kwpolska 3y agoI’d rather not be picked up by Uber at the middle of whichever area shares my postal code, and I’d rather not get my food delivered there. On the other hand, postal codes can sometimes apply to a handful of buildings, and sometimes can apply to entire cities, depending on the country and local area, so they can either be very unhelpful or almost as invasive as sharing your precise location.
- gabereiser 3y agoThere are entire counties here in the US with the same zip code. Varying by miles. So yeah, it’s not a reliable source of location for delivery purposes without a complete address.
- wlonkly 3y agoIt fails in the other direction in Canada, where a specific postal code works like a 9+4 zip code, in that it might identify one side of one block of a street, so it doesn't give you much additional privacy through precision loss anyway.
- gabereiser 3y agoThe US does that too in most places. 5+4 zip codes. It's still not enough and suffers the same precision issues and we (the USA) are woefully ill-prepared for the housing build out boom that will happen in the next decade. We need a better system. We will exhaust our zip codes like we have our IPv4 addresses.
- wlonkly 3y agoOops, right, 5+4, not 9+4. Counting is hard. But yeah, what I meant to express was that Canada doesn't have a lower-precision version in regular use.
- bombcar 3y agoZip codes don't need to identify buildings, they need to identify post offices (and with +4, mail carrier routes). That's a much smaller number.
- bombcar 3y agoUber and delivery are both mapping applications. Pickup from McDonald’s is not, at most there will be two or four in a zip code.
- 3y ago
- salawat 3y agoYou wish it wasn't like that, yet you helped build one of the cornerstones that enabled it to become that way. Curious. I'm getting mixed messages here. Is this an example of "I knew not what I was doing", or what? I eval projects I'll assist by thinking of applications 2 or three times removed from the project prospectus exactly to not unknowingly further the ends of a surveillance state.
- gabereiser 3y agoI like location api’s, otherwise we wouldn’t have turn by turn directions, maps, trail guides, etc. I don’t like location tracking for the purposes of advertisements, proximity correlation, geofencing targeting, and location sharing without consent.