Starting in Android 12, individual apps will give you the choice. That meant sacrificing the functionality of apps that legitimately need your precise location to restrict all apps. Technically, this has always been an option in Android, but it was a system-wide switch. "Approximate" location uses Wi-Fi and cellular data to locate you within 100 meters. At best, it can figure out where you are down to the meter. "Precise" location uses your phone's sensors-GPS, mostly-to determine your exact location. It's essentially the difference between telling someone your street address versus telling them the city you live in. The difference between "Precise" and "Approximate" is pretty self-explanatory. Related: With iOS 15, the iPhone Stays Ahead of Android in Privacy Precise vs. Previously, you could restrict an app to use your location only once or only while using the app, but it was still your exact location. I'll call my ISP, SKyrim, and ask them as to whether they share their network topology to enable geolocation on their networks.Google followed in Apple's footsteps with the introduction of "Precise" and "Approximate" location access in Android 12. then I shouldn't have been able to pinpoint my location with such precision. So if that "nearby WiFi networks" theory was true. when I originally pulled my location the time I was pinpointed "precisely" on the map I was connecting to a router from my desktop over an ethernet connection. Oh and btw, I forgot to mention in my prior post. I think the idea that iPhone users are "scanning and sending" the WiFi survey data back to google, and the wardriving, perhaps in conjunction with the Google Maps "Street View" mapping might seem like a very possible method of collecting this data however, in practicality, it does not work as a business model. Relying on "WiFi Networks" in your area seems highly inaccurate and in the end may not even offer a significant improvement in granularity over IP lookup. Equipment breaks, network settings change, people move. Not to mention MiFi and Adhoc networks which are "designed" to be mobile and travel with the users. Think about it, the WiFi networks change every day. WiFi networks these days simply don't stay long in one place. Using WiFi networks around you seems to be a highly inaccurate and ineffective method of collecting data. Of course, if you really want the system go banana, you can start exchanging wifi routers around the globe with fellow revolutionaries of the no-global-positioning movement. After that, it extends in "50 meters chunks" (the range of a newly found wifi connection). adds additional networks you see that are currently not in the database to their database, so they can be reused later.Īs you see, the system builds up by itself.The more wifi networks around, the higher is the accuracy of the positioning. queries its database if geolocation exists for some of the wifis you passed, and returns the "wardrived" position if found, eventually with triangulation if intensities are present.Every time a query is performed to the system (probably in compliance with the W3C draft for the geolocation API) your computer sends the wifi identifiers it sees, and the system does two things: So, to answer your question, google, or someone for him, did "wardriving" around, mapping the wifi presence. Now, my wifi moved to Tokyo, but the queried system still thinks the wifi router is in Switzerland, because either it has no information about the additional wifis surrounding me right now, or it cannot sort out the conflicting info (namely, the specific info about my wifi router against my ip geolocation, which pinpoints me in the far east). Well the secret is that I am now connected through wireless, and my wireless router has been identified (thanks to association to other wifis around me at that time) in a very accurate area in Switzerland. Today I tried, and I appear to be in Switzerland.
Yet, my location until some days ago was not pinpinted exactly, except in the broad Tokyo area. I am currently in Tokyo, and I used to be in Switzerland.
0 kommentar(er)
