I’d wager 99.9% of the users didn’t realize that they are effectively sending their live GPS coords to a random website when taking a photo.

But yes, a prop to the input tag ’includeLocation’ which would then give the user some popup confirmation prompt would have been nice

You don't get to access or export your own data in order to protect your privacy, but Google still gets 100% access to it.

Some messaging apps do the same and won't let you take a screenshot of your own conversations. Like, someone sent me an address, but I can't take a screenshot to "protect my privacy".

  ":<>?|\*

[0]: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/952

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/268079113 Status: Won't Fix (Intended Behavior).

https://app.vigilo.city/

The app is very basic, but has amazingly little barriers to entry. Notably you don't need an account to just report things, what I'd call an "open door" app. Sadly, without gps exif, this is much higher friction now. Pretty pissed at this. It's not hard to design a clean flow that permits to inform the user specifically of location sharing in the picker.

I've done a lot of neat projects with geolocation over the years. Including a personal travel diary, a bunch of visualizations of tweets and Flickr photos, etc etc. I am sad that's become nearly impossible but I do respect that most people don't understand the privacy risk.

Meanwhile on the advertising backend Google knows your exact location and is using it to help third parties target ads to you. And sleazy apps like Grindr sell location streams to anyone who asks. The bad guys get this data, just not the useful apps.

Unfortunately, there is no good way to solve the problem while maintaining convenience. As the author noted, prompts while uploading don't really work. Application defaults don't really work for web browsers, since what is acceptable for one website isn't necessarily acceptable for another. Having the user enter the location through the website make the user aware of the information being disclosed, but it is inconvenient.

Does the situation suck? Yes. On the other hand, I think Google is doing the responsible thing here.

I care less about the location data as I usually know where the photos are just by looking at them but I understand there are good use cases for it and agree including location should be a user choice

If your app targets Android 10 (API level 29) or higher and needs to retrieve unredacted EXIF metadata from photos, you need to declare the ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION permission in your app's manifest, then request this permission at runtime.

Caution: Because you request the ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION permission at runtime, there is no guarantee that your app has access to unredacted EXIF metadata from photos. Your app requires explicit user consent to gain access to this information.

I made another quick check on my device, Chrome doesn't have the ACCESS_MEDIA_LOCATION permission and doesn't seem to request it at runtime, so the location info is stripped from the EXIF data when a file is selected.

Chromium also seems have no feature to ask the user whether he agrees to share the stored location when uploading images, so there is probably no capability to request the permission at runtime.

Not satisfying, I know, but despite some judgements in the tickets the implementation seems to work as designed.

Instead, it could be considered a feature-request for Chrome to ask the user about this on upload, or couple the location-permission of a website to the permission to share EXIF-location data when uploading files (Although I think the logic on that is not really tight, the user giving permission to share his location now doesn't necessarily mean that he agrees to share all his locations from the past from EXIF-data)

[0] https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage/shared/m...

Element (the matrix client) used to not strip geolocation metadata for the longest time. I don't know if they fixed that yet.

I used to run a small website that allowed users to upload pictures. Most people were not aware that they were telling me where they were, when the picture was taken, their altitude, which direction they were facing, etc.

If you go in and turn location on (which should have a warning on it), then you're the sort of person who changes defaults, a more sophisticated user than the majority of the population who is able to take responsibility for the consequences. Yes, I can imagine a scenario where someone ends up with this setting turned on through no fault of their own, but it shouldn't be the role of an OS vendor to prevent every possible mistake.

Thankfully F-Droid has a "never update this app" checkbox for now, but eventually I'm sure third-party developers will require minimum Android versions that mean I need to lose this functionality :/

Edit: found it, it was VesIC https://github.com/VincentEngel/VES-Image-Compare/releases/t...

Strange UI that they are involuntarily capturing but then removing it.

Bluetooth is not QuickShare, stop conflating them. Bluetooth works. I just tried it. It just sends the entire file to the destination, filename intact with all EXIF, no gimmicks, tricks, or extra toggles. As it has always done for 20+ years.

I will never share my location via images with anybody then myself. I do use location for my local Photoprism on my own server

0 https://codeberg.org/Starfish/Imagepipe#how-to-get-the-app

No. I don't want people like you unknowingly spying on me when I upload a picture. GrapheneOS patched that insane behavior long ago, but not including leaky metadata should be the default, sane behavior.

  Suncalc models the relationship between the date, time of day, the geographic 
  location of a place, and the position of the sun in the sky, together with 
  the length & direction of the shadows it casts. [0]

I get it. This unequivocally sucks. It's a clear loss of functionality for a group of people who are educated about the advantages and disadvantages of embedded EXIF data. But I don't honestly think Google could have consulted their community. It's just too big. So when the author says:

> Because Google run an anticompetitive monopoly on their dominant mobile operating system.

I don't think the problem here is that Google is anticompetitive (though that's a problem in other areas). I think it's just too big that they can't possibly consult with any meaningful percentage of their 1 billion customers (or however many Android users are out there). They may also feel it's impossible to educate their users about the benefits and dangers of embedded location information (just thinking about myself personally, I'm certain that I'd struggle to convey they nuances of embedded location data to my parents).

I will note that Google Photos seems to happily let you add images to shared albums with embedded location information. I can't recall if you get any privacy-related warnings or notices.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Google-Chrome-makes-cookie-thef...

However had to me this reads as "we control the now private web". This also aligns, in my opinion, with age verification (systemd already pushes for it). So we move into a not so open world wide web. Are you identified? If yes, you can get information; if no you can not. Personally I am in the underground anyway, as long-term linux users so I don't really care that much (though I also use Win10 on a computer on my left side, for various reasons). But I am really annoyed at Google. Every day Google adds to problems and drama. It is not good that this monopoly can control so much in the whole ecosystem, even if I don't understand why people want to share photos and geolocation and what underwear they were wearing at that moment in time ...