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At this point, your device is not giving anyone your location without explicit permission. So it really just comes down to your IP Address, which services do ne

At this point, your device is not giving anyone your location without explicit permission. So it really just comes down to your IP Address, which services do need.

golem14 8mo ago
I think your is statement is inaccurate to the point of being intentionally misleading: Many devices, when running, and in some cases even if turned off but connected to their battery, will ping cell towers (maybe even BLE/Wifi) and get triangulated by the network infrastructure (such as cell towers) without actively broadcasting the GPS location. That's why I don't quite understand why the gubernment needs to have finer grained data (esp around the US/Mexican border). Precision location info would only be needed if you need to track people in densely populated areas.
- jonas21 8mo ago
  That location information is not available to apps or ad networks without user consent. The government can access it from the carrier with a warrant, but that's not what we're discussing here.
  - techdmn 8mo ago
    Carriers have also sold customer location data, no search warrant required. Though we can rest assured that the FCC has slapped the carriers' wrists with the utmost seriousness.
    - lesuorac 8mo ago
      And sold it to not just the government but anybody _claiming_ to be a bounty hunter (and some other professions).
  - tempaccount5050 8mo ago
    Couldn't you just maintain a list of cell tower IPs and figure it out with traceroute?
    - sroussey 8mo ago
      Cell towers are not working at the IP level, so no
    - wat10000 8mo ago
      IP doesn't handle roaming very well. If you got routed onto the internet directly from your local cell tower, then your connections would drop whenever you switched to a different tower, which is somewhat suboptimal. Cell networks handle it at a lower level and route your traffic through a central location which serves as the origin of your IP traffic. Geolocate your IP while on cell data and you'll probably see something pretty far away from where you are. My phone's IP address at the moment is about 400 miles away from the actual phone.
  - golem14 8mo ago
    I think that's very much what is discussed in this whole thread.
- legitster 8mo ago
  Cell-site location information (CSLI) is not available to apps or adware and is protected by the Fourth Amendment.
  - kube-system 8mo ago
    It was freely sold up until a handful of years ago
  - golem14 8mo ago
    Yes, but it is available to the gubernment ? Especially this gubernment?
  - janalsncm 8mo ago
    You may want to look into the Third Party Doctrine. If the government wants to tap your phone they need a warrant. If they want to buy it from a willing seller like Verizon they don’t.
tencentshill 8mo ago
Then you are obligated to obscure that with a trusted no-log VPN too.
notnullorvoid 8mo ago
IP Address is all you need to get fairly accurate (town or neighborhood) location for most of North America. But it is necessary to send it somewhere, otherwise the internet wouldn't work. Unfortunately it seems to have become accepted for our devices to communicate constantly and often with services we never explicitly started communication with (like Ad networks used in Apps). Permission systems on devices should care about Network connections just as much as Location. Ideally when installing an app you'd get the list of domains it requests to communicate with, and you could toggle them. Bonus points if the app store made it a requirement to identify which Domains are third parties and the category like an Ad service.
- danaris 8mo ago
  That would be great—for about 0.3% of us, those who both care about privacy and have the knowledge and time to go through those sorts of listings. No; what we need is to ban this data collection entirely.
tlavoie 8mo ago
I think the issue here is one of informed consent. You might say, "OK, this makes sense" when agreeing to location data for a weather app. In the context of whether it's going to hail soon, location is reasonable. What you only see in those GDPR-type banners is that the data is being re-sold off to 1001 "partners", none of whom are important for my hail-to-head concerns. Never mind all the cases where it's re-sold on to all the governments and personal-level creeps through aggregators.
unethical_ban 8mo ago
IPv6 addresses, particularly hardlines, are often accurate down to the block.
titzer 8mo ago
If you use Google Location Services, which is stock install on basically all Android devices, it absolutely is uploading "anonymized" GPS data all the time.
nerdsniper 8mo ago
Verizon and AT&T were literally selling the realtime location of your device without any ability for users turn it off. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-verizon-claim-that-selling-location-data-without-consent-is-legal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-ve... You're still that confident that no one else is selling your location data without your knowledge?

At this point, your device is not giving anyone your location without explicit permission. So it really just comes down to your IP Address, which services do need.

golem14 8mo ago

I think your is statement is inaccurate to the point of being intentionally misleading: Many devices, when running, and in some cases even if turned off but connected to their battery, will ping cell towers (maybe even BLE/Wifi) and get triangulated by the network infrastructure (such as cell towers) without actively broadcasting the GPS location. That's why I don't quite understand why the gubernment needs to have finer grained data (esp around the US/Mexican border). Precision location info would only be needed if you need to track people in densely populated areas.

jonas21 8mo ago
That location information is not available to apps or ad networks without user consent. The government can access it from the carrier with a warrant, but that's not what we're discussing here.
- techdmn 8mo ago
  Carriers have also sold customer location data, no search warrant required. Though we can rest assured that the FCC has slapped the carriers' wrists with the utmost seriousness.
  - lesuorac 8mo ago
    And sold it to not just the government but anybody _claiming_ to be a bounty hunter (and some other professions).
- tempaccount5050 8mo ago
  Couldn't you just maintain a list of cell tower IPs and figure it out with traceroute?
  - sroussey 8mo ago
    Cell towers are not working at the IP level, so no
  - wat10000 8mo ago
    IP doesn't handle roaming very well. If you got routed onto the internet directly from your local cell tower, then your connections would drop whenever you switched to a different tower, which is somewhat suboptimal. Cell networks handle it at a lower level and route your traffic through a central location which serves as the origin of your IP traffic. Geolocate your IP while on cell data and you'll probably see something pretty far away from where you are. My phone's IP address at the moment is about 400 miles away from the actual phone.
- golem14 8mo ago
  I think that's very much what is discussed in this whole thread.
legitster 8mo ago
Cell-site location information (CSLI) is not available to apps or adware and is protected by the Fourth Amendment.
- kube-system 8mo ago
  It was freely sold up until a handful of years ago
- golem14 8mo ago
  Yes, but it is available to the gubernment ? Especially this gubernment?
- janalsncm 8mo ago
  You may want to look into the Third Party Doctrine. If the government wants to tap your phone they need a warrant. If they want to buy it from a willing seller like Verizon they don’t.

tencentshill 8mo ago

Then you are obligated to obscure that with a trusted no-log VPN too.

notnullorvoid 8mo ago

IP Address is all you need to get fairly accurate (town or neighborhood) location for most of North America. But it is necessary to send it somewhere, otherwise the internet wouldn't work. Unfortunately it seems to have become accepted for our devices to communicate constantly and often with services we never explicitly started communication with (like Ad networks used in Apps). Permission systems on devices should care about Network connections just as much as Location. Ideally when installing an app you'd get the list of domains it requests to communicate with, and you could toggle them. Bonus points if the app store made it a requirement to identify which Domains are third parties and the category like an Ad service.

danaris 8mo ago
That would be great—for about 0.3% of us, those who both care about privacy and have the knowledge and time to go through those sorts of listings. No; what we need is to ban this data collection entirely.

tlavoie 8mo ago

I think the issue here is one of informed consent. You might say, "OK, this makes sense" when agreeing to location data for a weather app. In the context of whether it's going to hail soon, location is reasonable. What you only see in those GDPR-type banners is that the data is being re-sold off to 1001 "partners", none of whom are important for my hail-to-head concerns. Never mind all the cases where it's re-sold on to all the governments and personal-level creeps through aggregators.

unethical_ban 8mo ago

IPv6 addresses, particularly hardlines, are often accurate down to the block.

titzer 8mo ago

If you use Google Location Services, which is stock install on basically all Android devices, it absolutely is uploading "anonymized" GPS data all the time.

nerdsniper 8mo ago

Verizon and AT&T were literally selling the realtime location of your device without any ability for users turn it off. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-verizon-claim-that-selling-location-data-without-consent-is-legal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-ve... You're still that confident that no one else is selling your location data without your knowledge?