There was a proof of concept app ages ago that demonstrated how for any seemingly important permission like location, there were ways to get at the very least “good enough” data for it through other sources on/in the phone, even when you only gave it the bare minimum permissions (nothing that prompted for permissions or would show up in the play store).
From most wide to most precise, you have triangulation by cell towers, Wi-fi SSIDs have been pretty thoroughly mapped to location ages ago, and when your phone sees multiple SSIDs at once it can triangulate location even better based on the signal strength of each. GPS is the most accurate, but location can be trimmed down to well within the walls of a building, if not down to the room without it.
Fucking horrible.
Here it is on F-Droid. Doesn’t have the location features I thought it did though. That must have been something else.
Read an article the other day where someone wiresharked to grab all the phone data the apps were using and they still were sending lat lon based on IP even with location turned off 🙃
I don’t know much about ipv6 but I wonder if it’s more accurate
I think that between ipv4 and ipv6 the only thing that changes is how the ip is composed (AKA: only numeric vs alphanumeric)
The addresses are longer (32-bit) and hexadecimal so you have sixteen digits 0-F. It also doesn’t require NAT and has native IPSec, whereas ipv4 requires addons. There are probably other differences, I hate networking.
i hate networking
I feel you
Also, thank you for the info, i just knew about the 32 bit thing!
IPv6 without stateful DHCP can reveal your device since the latter half of the address is comprised of your device’s MAC address. Unless you use randomized MAC, I guess. There are some other advantages because they are globally unique. NAT, as you mentioned, is a big one. Anycast is another, but I don’t fully understand how that works. It somehow assigns the same IP to multiple hosts for redundancy.
Wow, I didn’t know that it could reveal your MAC. I set all my devices to randomize, but I doubt most people know to do this. Did a cursory bit of research and it seems newer configurations avoid this at least.
Well theres more addresses so is the location more precise?
I doubt, in the end it can maybe say “yeah you are definetly in that specific region/province in that country” but nothing more, i think it may be a little more precise than IPv4 because they will not assign you the IP that someone already has unlike IPv4
That wouldn’t do that. That’s not how any of this works.
That’s so not his it works that I’m worried about explaining it to you.
Uh okay lol. Like I said, I don’t know much about ipv6, which is why I’m asking questions. I’m not a networking person… lots of experience with MGRS and geospatial systems though. More digits = more precision in that world. I suppose there could be an equal number of regions that ipv6 ranges map to, just more addresses per region, so same precision as ipv4?
Anyway, you particularly should not explain it if you’re worried, thanks.
And assuming they work the same is insane. Geospatial systems map geographic position in space.
Of course more digits means more precise location in space!
K
“I wonder if…” isn’t exactly an assumption lol
I’m looking it up and found this
IPv6 Geolocation: IPv6, each device can have a unique IP address, allowing for more precise geolocation. This is a significant leap from IPv4, where multiple devices might share a single IP, leading to less accurate location data.
https://www.abstractapi.com/guides/ip-geolocation/understanding-ipv6-geolocation
Also found another source that claims ipv6 geolocation is not yet as precise as ipv4 in practice.
Like IPv4, IPv6 does have geolocation data, although it has yet to be as precise as IPv4 geolocation
https://ip-geolocation.whoisxmlapi.com/blog/how-does-ipv6-compare-with-ipv4-geolocation
Android apps can’t see ssids without asking for permissions (GPS or sensors I think?)
I believe wifi/network info is classed as a “normal” permission that the system gives automatically, so the user isn’t asked unless they manually change this.
That has to be deliberate. Networking straight up does not require showing apps the said, or even type of connection. A boolean metered/unmetered or connection number (nwtwork interface 0 1 2 3 etc) is the most that could possibly be required.
