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simonmicro 80 points 3 years ago

The location permission is needed to activate BLE and scan for other devices using low energy. Android things...

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Robin 35 points 3 years ago

The location permission is because in dense cities there are enough unique, stationary bluetooth endpoint that you can guesstimate a location.

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JohnEdwa 18 points 3 years ago

And sometimes actual BT beacons made specifically for that reason. It's one of the ways shopping centres and their apps keep track what shops people visit.

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miss_brainfart 20 points 3 years ago

Well then, learned something new today.

But hey, if the app can be verified not to do anything stupid with that permission, that's more than you can say about the closed-source offerings on the Play Store

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EunieIsTheBus 23 points 3 years ago

Insert Padme Anakin Meme here:

You did verify it, didn't you?

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rufus 9 points 3 years ago

Gotta sometimes depend on some other people in your life. I also depend on people not mixing toxic stuff into my groceries. The people from F-Droid are generally nice and have proven themselves. And there is more than one pair of eyes on most of the code. And automatic checks.

(I got this one, but it's for Linux and USB, not Android & Bluetooth: https://github.com/jnweiger/led-name-badge-ls32/ )

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AccidentalLemming 3 points 3 years ago

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miss_brainfart 2 points 3 years ago

Well, it's one of those things where I have to trust other people to do it. But at least people are actually able to do it

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Gryzor 18 points 3 years ago

Afaik it's not "Android things". Apple devices also use location to use some BT functions if I correctly recall.

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conciselyverbose 15 points 3 years ago

The problem is many more apps abuse Bluetooth for location tracking than use it for any legitimate purpose.

Ideally they would isolate the process and allow users to do managed individual scans in an app for the purpose of handling Bluetooth devices, and only allow persistent permissions to communicate with specific devices. I'm not sure enough of the underlying protocols to know how much hoop jumping it would take to do that though.

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tkk13909 2 points 3 years ago

One could also just allow the permission but revoke network permissions

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conciselyverbose 1 point 3 years ago

There are cases where that would work (including possibly here), but I was speaking more generally to how I'd like to see the abuse of Bluetooth beacons prevented.

I don't think most non-technical people recognize how pervasive that shit is.

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miss_brainfart 1 point 3 years ago

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tekcaj 3 points 3 years ago

What app did you find?

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miss_brainfart 2 points 3 years ago

Badge Magic on F-Droid, though I'm not sure if it would actually work with any device

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Potatos_are_not_friends 1 point 3 years ago

With all the comments about requiring a location, is there no other way?

I bought a gadget like this and the requirement was to download a chinese-made app (which still had Chinese characters inside the app), and then a bunch of eye raising permission requests opened up.

And maybe the answer is "No", which is a shame but understandable.

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