With the important caveat though that a lot of devices use AGPS, I don’t understand in too much detail and I think on some devices it can be disabled but I think this reveals some info
replyThey may be thinking of Google's coarse location feature where the handset checks SSIDs in the proximity against Googles database for fast lookup.
replyOh yeah, makes sense didn't think about this especially since I don't have the google services.
replyThat's not really GPS anymore so when discussing the topic it would be worth being exact on this.
This is correct but if the phone's internet is off, there is no way for BSSID look up but maps might collect this in the background for telemetry and send it to the server once the internet is turned back on.
replyYou are largely correct about everyday location privacy but I was thinking more in the adversarial direction (read military/ GPS denied zones) when I started this work. There have been news about GPS being denied/spoofed over european region. When your phone can't get the GPS signal, it would try to retrieve alternative signals (A-GPS, cellular network etc) - this is where an adversary could be listening for leaks. So GPS denial could effectively be a trigger and the follow ups after that trigger could lead to leaks.
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