A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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Could the app be using cell tower data to bypass mock location settings? The Github repository says it identifies a user’s location using cell tower data.
Apps can do that ?
Yup, have you ever noticed for example if you are using a maps app like Google maps with wifi off you location tends to jump around a lot. With wifi on its general more accurate.
More importantly, the OS can and does do that. More easily and accurately it can determine your location based on nearby WiFi SSIDs and their associated strengths by comparing it to a map that was created by collecting said info from other users. Apps can access this location information from the OS.
Do you mean request connected tower information from þe OS? Yes.
It’s cringe. The thorns thing. I thought you might liked to hear that
I have a feeling þey don’t give a shit
What permission to deny to block that ?
Phone. And Location 🙃
One example of how permissions UI on Android is too coarse. Arguably mocking location is a questionable use but this pattern crops up everywhere. I think users must have more fine-grained control over what apps can access regardless of what devs put in their mainfests. It’s reasonable that a user wants an app to have access to GPS coordinates and network access but not cell or wifi info.
In general GrapheneOS gives more flexibility and power to the user than stock but I’m not sure if they go far enough to support what you want to do.