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Comment by phakding | Hacker News Reader

I think Google is the culprit here. Not just for wifi scanning, but also for Bluetooth, Google demands location permissions.

In last 5 years or so, I have had a Garmin, a Fitbit and now a Garmin watch. I never used to have to enable location with my first Garmin tracker untill I upgraded Android os. After that point onward all my fitness trackers now ask to enable location in order to connect to my phone.

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For good reason! There's many online services where you can put in a wifi MAC and pretty much know within 100M where someone is.

Yeah, the message could be made clearer about what's actually being allowed, but in the end I'm glad it's there. Maybe a generic system for when you request a permission being able to provide an explanation string or something. I know some apps made a pop-up before the prompt but I found that rather verbose especially when it was incredibly obvious why they needed the permission.

> There's many online services where you can put in a wifi MAC and pretty much know within 100M where someone is.

Minor nitpick, it’s the BSSID that’s used to lookup the location. In some cases the BSSID is the same as the MAC address (usually with cheaper consumer gear), but it’s not the case with APs that are broadcasting (or have capability to broadcast) more than one SSID. As one example, think of APs that have “Home” and “Guest” separate networks.

> There's many online services where you can put in a wifi MAC and pretty much know within 100M where someone is.

Somewhat ironically because Google went and made that dataset, then publicized it.

Google is far from the only one to have that dataset. Apple has one, too, for example, as does Skyhook. And Mozilla ( https://location.services.mozilla.com/ ).

Why does the app need Bluetooth or WiFi scanning permissions? Can't you handle the pairing in the OS and allow the app to use an already established connection?

I think for Bluetooth it doesn't work that way (you can connect some standard devices Android can use itself, e.g. a headset on OS level, but not arbitrary devices). For WLAN it's probably an ease of use thing, automatically finding and setting up the device instead of telling the user "please connect to the WLAN created by your new device and then press this Button".

> Why does the app need Bluetooth or WiFi scanning permissions?

In Android and w/r/t BLE, the OS doesn't provide a user-facing bonding interface. The app has to do it.

My charge3 (basically, the same as a charge2 but truly waterproof) connects to my phone when I enter a "Walking" exercise and it uses the GPS data to plot my route AND to optimize my average step length distance. They do sell trackers with embedded GPS (that eat battery life, as you'd imagine)

I'm just saying fitness trackers have at least one legit reason. Unlike a remote control seemingly having no legit reason to scan local wifi.

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