If you’re referring to the crowd-sourced collection and contribution of Wi-Fi SSIDs, iOS has the “Wi-Fi Networking” toggle in location services that turns this on or off. If you’re referring to the use of that data, it is one of several components in the locations API that cannot be separated out.
Can you clarify? Turning off wi-fi does not and should not turn off location services. Turning off location services is a separate Settings page on all recent versions of iOS.
That only turns off using WiFi for data. If you have location services enabled, which is necessary to get ypur location on iOS, iOS will continue scanning WiFi networks and uploading them to Apple.
Nevermind that iOS provides an extensive list of system-level data collection toggles. Don't want to contribute traffic data? Done. Don't want to contribute cellular/wifi location data? Done. Don't want your phone collecting data about what stores you visit and when? Done.
With Android, you don't have a choice for any of that. It just does it. Google Maps constantly slurps up every bit of location related information it can, whether you like it or not.
iOS even allows for forcing apps to only have access to coarse location data - it's off by a few miles - as well as only granting location data when the app is actually in use. Also options you don't get with Android.
The only thing I miss after switching: Android allowed for controlling not just cellular data but background data.
It is much less of a challenge than keeping your data away from Apple on iOS as my previous comment demonstrated.
> Oh even when the WiFi is off it will still scan for nearby SSIDs to get your position?
Again, this is opt in even on Google-flavored Android devices. There is no digging through settings required — the opt in checkbox appears in the setup flow. On iOS, there is nothing you can do to stop your device from doing this.
This is an odd response to this specific discussion, because Apple removed the user ability to disable wifi scans for location services in iOS 11. If anything, Apple is worse in this specific regard.
All Apple devices do this by default as well, and they don't seem to publish an opt-out for it. Possibly they also follow the _nomap suffix as a few others do, but seems more likely they just don't let you opt-out at all.
> If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers (where supported by a device) in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations.
If an app needs to connect to a Wi-Fi AP on the appliance, you have to allow location since having access to the Wi-Fi scan of networks that are in range can allow for some coarse geolocation, thanks to open source SSID databases [1]. I wish Android and iOS would add functionality that allowed an app to connect to a known SSID without access to the scan because the permission requirement is rightly off-putting.
"By enabling Location Services for your devices, you agree and consent to the transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of your location data and location search queries by Apple and its partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based and road traffic-based products and services."
It will also send your location to Apple when no app is requesting your location:
"If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations."
Unlike on Android, you cannot get your location without sending this data to Apple:
"To use features such as these, you must enable Location Services on your iPhone"
Not sure what you exactly want from Apple here. Nobody other than a handful of people are regularly switching Location Services on or off. Especially at a global level as opposed to at the app level.
And even then it's only 4 taps. Which is 1 more tap than what's involved in changing WiFi networks something a lot of people do.
"researchers found 24 popular iPhone apps that were collecting location data — like Bluetooth beacons to Wi-Fi network names... and cell network names."
A point of note - finding the names of wireless routers, or cell network - requires calling private APIs, so those apps should be banned from the store on that basis alone.
In Apple's defense: in the iPhone settings where you can turn the sending of data on and off (General > About > Diagnostics and Usage), it also gives you access to all the data it has sent, which mostly seems to be related to cellular communication.
Other data is about location services accuracy which contains the bundle ID of the application that requested the location.
Most messages contain a device ID, but it's not the devices UDID, but some other ID, so this might actually be anonymous.
I might keep this feature turned on as cellular reception and location data might be very helpful for them to improve the antenna design.
iOS collects and transmits all MAC addresses on the local network even with location services off, there is no way to disable this:
> iOS shares with Apple
the handset Bluetooth UniqueChipID, the Secure Element ID
(associated with the Secure Element used for Apple Pay and
contactless payment) and the Wifi MAC addresses of nearby
devices e.g. of other devices in a household of the home
gateway. When the handset location setting is enabled these
MAC addresses are also tagged with the GPS location.[0]
So the answer is clearly that while they are both bad for privacy with the default configuration, some Android devices provide more control over the device and thus options for disabling telemetry.
This is talking about wideband location scanning, not location services for an app. Apple's location services already do allow you to turn them off on a per-app basis.
Can you explain, then, why "Routing and Traffic" is a system service with background access to location services, but iOS never suggests that I might want to turn it off?
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