They're not tracking locations because they're not using GPS.
They are checking the environment for stuff that might have known locations, which is different. You can do the same with bluetooth/BLE.
They are checking the environment for stuff that might have known locations, which is different. You can do the same with bluetooth/BLE.
The user must be in control of whether their location is disclosed to an app.
Not anymore you can't. Sometime before 2020 apple, and also google, started treating BLE scanning as an operation needing location permissions. (I had to deal with this transition while submitting an iOS app that connected to a BLE device which actually had a GPS module in it)
As of now, I still have to turn on location on my android phone to connect to some BLE devices.
How? By searching it in https://wigle.net.
That ended the debate quite swiftly.