
Ask HN: How does my android device know my weather without location perms? - awinter-py
I&#x27;ve disabled every location setting I can find on the device, both general location and the specific options to share with google, and it&#x27;s still giving me weather.<p>Are they just ignoring the setting?
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terrycody
You are connecting your phone to a wifi spot or honeycomb network around your
places, they all have IPs, so IP is enough to tell where u live, not very
accurate but enough to figure out many things.

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jolmg
It's more accurate to use the MAC address of the Wifi spot. Google was
triangulating the locations of Wifi spots and recording their MAC address
while taking pictures for Google Maps Street View.

[https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2010/01/24/google-is-
wardr...](https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2010/01/24/google-is-wardriving/)

[https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-
wardrivin...](https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-wardriving-
how-engineering-trumped-privacy/d/d-id/1104126)

[https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-street-
vi...](https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-street-view-pursued-
wardriving-by-design/d/d-id/1104110)

[http://transition.fcc.gov/DA-12-592A1.pdf](http://transition.fcc.gov/DA-12-592A1.pdf)

From the FCC report:

> Between May 2007 and May 2010, as part of its Street View project, Google
> Inc. (Google or Company) collected data from Wi-Fi networks throughout the
> United States and around the world. The purpose of Google's Wi-Fi data
> collection initiative was to capture information about Wi-Fi networks that
> the Company could use to help establish users' locations and provide
> location-based services.

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awinter-py
at this point I assume they're collecting more hotspot information from
smartphones running G maps vs from cars

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runjake
IP geolocation using external databases that don't require permissions for the
Location API.

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awinter-py
What does 'don't require permission' mean? I've assumed that when G says in a
settings page that I've disabled location upload, that's more or less binding
(regardless of whether the location info comes from GPS, wifi, LTE towers, or
maxmind).

Have I misunderstood?

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scottlawson
Yes I think you are misunderstanding what the poster means. When you make a
request to an external server, you are giving that server your IP address.
There is no way you can stop an external server from them taking your IP and
looking up your IP in a geolocation database.

Therefore this kind of location lookup does not require permission.

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awinter-py
_I_ can't stop it from doing a location lookup against my IP, you're right.
But this is a google service, they can choose to abide by the settings button
that I flipped to off. I'm confused by why they aren't.

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andykx
Does such a setting actually exist? I think you’re misunderstanding.

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godot
I think awinter-py means that because they turned off location services,
Google should not look up their location by IP and display the weather even if
they can.

But yeah, that's not what the location API means.

~~~
awinter-py
To be clear, this isn't a third-party weather app -- it's a feature built into
android that just appeared one day. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn it
off.

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phillipseamore
Celltowers broadcast their location and that is enough to get a pretty good
estimate of you location when GPS is disabled.

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gesman
Spying is a big business and paying for forgiveness is a small price to pay
over asking for permission.

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ta999999171
If you're running the Google Play Services/Google apps package, you've already
lost.

