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Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

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Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#41

Post by lultimouomo »

conesus wrote: post #25

I designed and built a wooden remote control[1] so I know a bit about why this is. My iOS app asks the user for location permissions because without it the remote control app won't know when to attempt to connect when you walk in the door with your iPhone but your remote is sitting at home, waiting for you to hit it to turn on your lights or play music on your Sonos. If you hit the button and nothing happens, that's…

Hi!

You might be interested to know that the Turn Touch homepage starts playing audio as soon as it is opened. This was enough for me to close it and never come back, and I think this sentiment is reasonably widespread.

I'm genuinely curios about the reason some people decide to add audio (or video for that matter, but audio is way worse) on autoplay. Do you enjoy when web pages you visit do it? Did you see from some kind of metric that it increases your sales?

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#43

Post by ryanbrunner »

maxxxxx wrote: post #9
neilsimp1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I agree lots of times what the app wants is innocuous, I'd still rather have the message than not. Maybe an option to open up a more detailed description of what the app wants the permissions for?

Yes there should be much finer detail in permissions.

Would it have helped in this case? Permissions should convey the privacy risk to the user, not just the technical details of what's happening.

To a non-technical user, "Access nearby Wifi signals" (or something similar) sounds totally innocuous. Most people would approve that assuming that the app just wants to connect to the internet.

You could get more detailed and say "Access nearby Wifi signals, which could reveal your location", which conveys the privacy risk. But to the average user, "access nearby wifi signals" isn't adding anything - the only real privacy risk is that location is revealed, so it just makes sense to convey it as your location.

There's other cases where I think there's a better case for finer-grained permissions - some apps ask for phone call permission just so they can know whether you're a call or not - arguably something that should hardly require permission at all, but it's lumped in with one of the more scary sounding ones.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#44

Post by icebraining »

blihp wrote: post #11
tyingq wrote: post #6

The coarse permissions and alarming text from the OS is a problem with both Android and iOS. Often, an app wants something fairly innocous, but has to ask for more, because it's grouped with other things in the same permission ask. Then, the OS message shifts all the blame with scary messages about what the app wants to do.

Two problems with this assumption per the article: 1) the app previously worked fine without the location information 2) the app no longer works at all without location information. The only legitimate use case for location I can think of would be to pull down cable/tv/radio channel/station listings. But this shouldn't be a requirement since the user could easily manually enter in the ones they want. My guess is that…

The problem here is that they don't really want location, they just want a list of the surrounding Wifi networks, it just happens that such information is easily converted into a location, so Android requests that permission.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#45

Post by conesus »

lultimouomo wrote: post #41
conesus wrote: post #25

I designed and built a wooden remote control[1] so I know a bit about why this is. My iOS app asks the user for location permissions because without it the remote control app won't know when to attempt to connect when you walk in the door with your iPhone but your remote is sitting at home, waiting for you to hit it to turn on your lights or play music on your Sonos. If you hit the button and nothing happens, that's…

Hi! You might be interested to know that the Turn Touch homepage starts playing audio as soon as it is opened. This was enough for me to close it and never come back, and I think this sentiment is reasonably widespread. I'm genuinely curios about the reason some people decide to add audio (or video for that matter, but audio is way worse) on autoplay. Do you enjoy when web pages you visit do it? Did you see from some…

Yikes! It's part of a hidden video that shouldn't play until you explicitly open it. What's your browser/OS? I tested on Chrome, Safari, and FF on mac as well as iOS.

I also just added a muted attribute to the `video` tag so it should no longer do that even if I messed up the JS for some browser somewhere. I encourage you to try it once again to confirm.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#46

Post by detaro »

lwkl wrote: post #37
phakding wrote: post #16

I think Google is the culprit here. Not just for wifi scanning, but also for Bluetooth, Google demands location permissions. In last 5 years or so, I have had a Garmin, a Fitbit and now a Garmin watch. I never used to have to enable location with my first Garmin tracker untill I upgraded Android os. After that point onward all my fitness trackers now ask to enable location in order to connect to my phone.

Why does the app need Bluetooth or WiFi scanning permissions? Can't you handle the pairing in the OS and allow the app to use an already established connection?

I think for Bluetooth it doesn't work that way (you can connect some standard devices Android can use itself, e.g. a headset on OS level, but not arbitrary devices). For WLAN it's probably an ease of use thing, automatically finding and setting up the device instead of telling the user "please connect to the WLAN created by your new device and then press this Button".

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#47

Post by tyingq »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #36
tyingq wrote: post #6

The coarse permissions and alarming text from the OS is a problem with both Android and iOS. Often, an app wants something fairly innocous, but has to ask for more, because it's grouped with other things in the same permission ask. Then, the OS message shifts all the blame with scary messages about what the app wants to do.

This can easily be solved by app developers though. Add a screen before the permission explaining why you want that particular permission, and limit asking permissions to the point that you need to use them rather than the first time the app starts up. Too many apps ask for permission immediately without any context as to why they're doing it.

That helps, but I don't feel like it solves it.

Technically, for example, an app may not even want to see all available SSIDs. Maybe an app just wants one passed to it. Sort of like a browser file dialog works.

The pop up text from the OS says it wants the user's location. That's not what it wants or needs.

This comment has some other examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19216715

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#48

Post by edent »

conesus wrote: post #45
lultimouomo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! You might be interested to know that the Turn Touch homepage starts playing audio as soon as it is opened. This was enough for me to close it and never come back, and I think this sentiment is reasonably widespread. I'm genuinely curios about the reason some people decide to add audio (or video for that matter, but audio is way worse) on autoplay. Do you enjoy when web pages you visit do it? Did you see from some…

Yikes! It's part of a hidden video that shouldn't play until you explicitly open it. What's your browser/OS? I tested on Chrome, Safari, and FF on mac as well as iOS. I also just added a muted attribute to the `video` tag so it should no longer do that even if I messed up the JS for some browser somewhere. I encourage you to try it once again to confirm.

Same here. Chrome on MacOS. Your device does look gorgeous though!

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#49

Post by mannykannot »

jfnixon wrote: post #22
codetrotter wrote: post #12

> Google, in its wisdom, has tied "Location" into things like BLE Scanning and WiFi scanning. The excuse is that you can use these things as a proxy for location. That is, if I know you are near access point X your location is probably near Y. It’s not an “excuse”, it’s a fact. If you allow an app to scan SSIDs you are allowing it to know your location. No amount of sarcasm on the part of OP is going to change that.

Um, no, that's not correct. SSIDs aren't tied to geographic location. The mothership might infer location by looking at the list of SSIDs and checking it against a geotagged list compiled by a mapper, but that's a completely different thing that saying if you let an app look for an SSID you are allowing to it to know your location. You might as well say that by giving a camera the ability to know the time, you are al…

If inferring location works well enough in enough cases (for the purposes of the inferrer), the fact that it is not completely accurate or reliable is moot.

Re: Why Does My Remote Control Need to Know My Location?

#50

Post by ryanbrunner »

tyingq wrote: post #47
ryanbrunner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can easily be solved by app developers though. Add a screen before the permission explaining why you want that particular permission, and limit asking permissions to the point that you need to use them rather than the first time the app starts up. Too many apps ask for permission immediately without any context as to why they're doing it.

That helps, but I don't feel like it solves it. Technically, for example, an app may not even want to see all available SSIDs. Maybe an app just wants one passed to it. Sort of like a browser file dialog works. The pop up text from the OS says it wants the user's location. That's not what it wants or needs. This comment has some other examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19216715

My point is that we shouldn't base permissions dialogs on what the app intends to do with the data, but what potential risk is introduced with the app having that data.

I could make an app that logs every phone call I make along with it's duration so it can recommend friends for me. I wouldn't expect that app's permissions dialog to read "Allow app to recommend friends to you".

Getting into the technical details doesn't work for average users, especially for cases like this where the risk isn't obvious - non-technical people will almost certainly not know that revealing local SSIDs reveals your location.

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