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Comment by tfoil2 | Hacker News Reader

Screw any app that really thinks it needs my precise coordinates in the foreground, let alone the background. Turn-by-turn directions in maps is the only exception I've found in 10 years of iPhone use.

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Off the top of my head, any app involving directions – public transport, say – can reasonably use precise coordinates. Uber is also a reasonable use-case (when you want it to use that data) given the density of some city streets. Then there are location-sharing apps generally, or apps where you want to check in to locations (maybe a bit fuzzier, but there could be a lot of taggable locations within say 500m), or camera applications, or geocaching, or…

It's great to have control, and it would be even better if we were able to specify the accuracy an app is able to achieve. But there are obviously some reasonable use-cases for both foreground and background tracking.

For an app like that, I'd like to see a "approve every request" option. I don't always need my transit app requesting my position (even if only when in the foreground) when I really only need to look up the nearest stop occasionally.

I want to be tracked by Google. I went out of my way to turn it on in iPhone. My location is leaked to cell towers and by what wifi network I'm connecting through anyway, and I'd rather be able to figure out which cool restaurant I went to months after my visit to Vilnius is over.

Plus my memory of my personal life is so unreliable, especially if I don't have any context, so if I'm ever in court I'd like to be able to share exactly where I was when I was there.

I've stopped thinking that real privacy is attainable. That being said, I refuse to share it with scummy companies like Uber.

I agree. This link came at the perfect time.

A car dealership who botched a warranty repair on my vehicle is stonewalling me - once they realized the error was likely to cost them $2k - $3k, their service department deleted my file and began claiming no evidence exists that I had ever been to their location. I got the scheduling department to confirm my appointment and just found my location history for that day showing that I was at the dealership right on time during the appointment. Going to send this to the manufacturer's corporate complaints departments. Thanks for the heads up.

Dealerships. And people wonder why dealership groups are lobbying like crazy to keep Tesla out of their state.

I've been using this for precisely the reasons you mention:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/where-have-i-been/id64155398...

Google's location history is excellent and I'd gladly pay for an equivalent application which I could self-host and set up with the minimum of hassle, but having them do it creeps me out too much. I've not managed to work out how to get OwnTracks to substitute fully for it.

Awesome, thanks for the link. I had been using Moves by ProtoGeo https://appsto.re/us/PNDwE.i and it's not very accurate. Still good for going back and remembering that awesome random place you found on vacation after the fact so you can recommend it.

I also wish the NSA had something like a personal data explore, but I know that will never happen.

Unfortunately I've not found WHIB to be enormously accurate either, but it does well enough. The main nuisance is interpreting having paused whilst walking past an establishment has having gone in it. Even Google's version couldn't get this right, at least in my case.

a decentralized version would be cool

Explicitly decided to keep Google Maps' location history activated on my device for precisely the same reasons. I'm yet to use it in court or something like that, but the argument about human memory resonates with me strongly - I've used location history many times to review e.g. on which day I was in some place or other few years ago. (Or once, years ago, to check how exactly did I get home after one party.)

RE people saying "just take a photo and use EXIF", that won't work because I don't know in advance what locations I will be interested in in the future.

Do you mean ex ante? A priori knowledge is that which is independent of experience, as in deduced from pure reason; it doesn't just mean 'in advance'.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks for this correction, I didn't realize "a priori" doesn't mean what I thought it means.

(I edited the comment to use "in advance" instead of "ex ante" though.)

in a more formal or philosophical context you're right, but the more colloquial "in advance" usage is not wrong per se (hehe).

I am not completely sure I understand what you want to accomplish, but I think you might find Moves (https://moves-app.com/) useful.

> That being said, I refuse to share it with scummy companies [...]

Moves is owned by Facebook (one has to decide for themselves about FB's scummyness).

Wow, I did not realize Moves was owned by Facebook. Guess I'll be deleting that app...

Or Life Cycle by Northcube. Kinda amazing.

Thanks: I installed it and will try it out for a bit before deciding if I switch to it or remain on Moves.

Seconding Life Cycle. Only stores the collected data on-device.

you could instead just snap a picture of every location you want to remember, you have the location attached as an EXIF

The things you think you'll want to remember later aren't the same things you find yourself wishing you had recorded when that "later" comes.

Apple's API don't discriminate with regards to precision. An app that shows nearby stores with a 1km radius precision requires the same level of permissions as an app that's trying to do 1m precision.

Apple's API allow very fine-grained control of both the accuracy and frequency of location updates, depending on, among other things, running in the foreground/background, the user's location etc.: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Pe...

There's currently no explicit penalty for requesting too much information, but the battery power indication could probably get users to uninstall apps wasting energy, and it can even get you app terminated.

Unlike Android which have precise and coarse location. If Google wanted, they could limit precise to GPS and similar apps and force everyone else to use coarse location or geo fencing.

Unfortunately Google doesn't care about your privacy. In fact, it's only a matter of time before they remove coarse locations and/or give every app full access to location data (the same way they did with internet access).

That's a good point. Maybe app developers should be able to request the level of access they want, like precise location, neighborhood (postal code), city, state or country.

If an app never needs more precise information than the country (say Spotify trying to decide whether they operate in your country), they don't need to request it. That also guards against bugs or security breaches in apps that try to do the right thing.

What about the desiredAccuracy property of CLLocationManager [1]?

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/clloc...

There is no specific permission for accuracy, which I think was the point there.

Right. An application can ask for what it wants (low accuracy is much faster and burns less battery since it doesn't start GPS) but there's no way for the user to say that an app can ONLY get low accuracy data.

A bit different from turn-by-turn, I use mine for precise positioning using topo maps out in the Australian bush.

I also very much like being able to use the geolocation in my photos to find ones from an exact location.

That's your personal choice and desired level of privacy. I like that my Lyft app knows where to set pick up and that my transit app knows the nearest street car location.

Agree with the OP that Uber can burn in hell for "always on"; I guess just in case I need an emergency Uber ride :-/

But feel free to just uninstall all those other apps that I love using.

Geotagging in photos it pretty useful. And find my iPhone. Then there's Pokemon Go - maybe not your cup of tea, but a lot of people love it. It's pretty useful to be able to share your location with someone in iMessage, I've done that a few times. Your mileage may vary.

One slightly frustrating thing is apple hides several key functionalities behind the always permission level.

For example, if I need my app to be woken up remotely by a Bluetooth peripheral that requires the "always" location permission to function.

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