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Comment by Barbing

18 hours ago

Thank you! Meant my comment for anyone who's not on the very latest version, anyone who experienced Android or another OS with disparate privacy-related behaviors as long as that OS has been around. Yes, now, the issue I'm talking about is solved for the general public on the latest Android devices! At reported cost to power users.

Just to add some more context: The change was applied in Android 10, which was released in 2019.

On OS-level there is no reduction in functionality, the implementation just ensures that the user agrees on sharing his location data to an app, and until that has been agreed it is not being shared (as to not hinder any normal app-operation).

Now the fact that the Chrome app doesn't trigger to ask the user-permissions is another topic, with its own (huge) complexity: If the user disagrees to share his location-history to a webpage, and Android can only ensure this for known media file types (while i.e. Windows cannot do this for ANY filetype, and on iOS I believe the user cannot even decide to not have it stripped), Chrome actually cannot commit to any decision taken by the user.

It's a known dilemma in the W3C, the Browser should ensure user privacy but for binary data it technically can't...