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Comment by 198d | Hacker News Reader

I believe the article mentioned that the data comes purely from triangulating your position with what cell towers you are connected to. The consent related to location services seems to be only related to the GPS data. The author mentioned a trip to China where he turned off cell data services and used the GPS and Wifi and that none of those locations were tracked in the file.

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  I believe the article mentioned that the data comes purely
  from triangulating your position with what cell towers you
  are connected to.

Correct. Wi-fi triangulation data is cached in a different file (which is also stored in your backups).

  The consent related to location services seems to be
  only related to the GPS data.

No, Location Services includes everything: Cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi triangulation, and GPS.

You need to have both enabled in order for any logging to occur.

Let's explore the 4 scenarios:

Cell Off, GPS Off: Nothing to log.

Cell On, GPS Off: Phone knows what towers it can see, but can't set the location.

Cell Off, GPS On: Phone knows where it is, but can't see towers.

Cell On, GPS On: Phone can see towers, and knows location. Logs this data.

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