Positon location service

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The Positon location service is a proprietary and highly privacy invasive service - created by developers tied to /e/OS with their funding. There's a deliberate effort to - hide that it's tied to them in order to convince other projects to adopt it, as opposed - to using the similar service they host for /e/OS itself. Using the service requires - uploading sensitive location data to obtain location estimates, similar to the Apple and - Google location services. As with the Apple and Google services, it's a centralized - proprietary service with fully proprietary data. Unlike those services, the people - behind it have a history of publishing notoriously insecure software such as the /e/OS - operating system itself which massively rolls back standard security, lags years behind - on security updates and covers all of that up. They blatantly scam their users with - false privacy/security claims for /e/OS, and nothing different should be expected from a - location service from the same group of people. Multiple people involved in it are also - actively participating in harassment targeting privacy/security researchers and - engineers including but not limited to GrapheneOS team members.

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The people behind the Positon location service have repeatedly talked about the - importance they see in centralizing the whole open source community around using their - service while locking out alternatives to it through proprietary data. They have spread - fear, uncertainty and doubt about making services using open mapping data through - claiming that it's a privacy hazard for people to have access to maps of Wi-Fi networks - publicly broadcasting their SSID despite that data already being available through many - commercial providers including publicly queryable databases such as Wigle. Anyone can - drive around building these maps and many companies have already built them, with the - data available for sale, as Positon shows with them obtaining access to it. The real - privacy hazard is sending your location in real time to a service, particularly a poorly - secured one from people known to cover up and downplay vulnerabilities. Positon has been - built to grab as much market share as possible early on before actual open options can - emerge and gather the necessary data.

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The people involved in Positon have only ever cared about their careers, power and - influence. They've consistently been on a side against real privacy and security, but - rather focused on monetizing people's demand for it and grabbing as much market share as - they can as quickly as they can with endless false marketing and attacks on projects - like GrapheneOS. They see GrapheneOS as a huge threat to them due to us striving to - bring people real privacy and security at no cost, which is far easier to obtain and - use. This invalidates the business model of their companies like Murena. They - consistently use their non-profits mainly as a way to earn money and promote their - for-profit initiatives.

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The service claims to be free of charge, but a core goal is turning it into a way to - get data from users to build their own database that's largely not going to be available - for use by others. Using it is helping them build a future business at the expense of - user privacy, little different from the Apple and Google services. This is not what the - open source community needs from a location service. The claims of no strings attached - and the implication that it's open are nonsense. Storing as little data as possible - would mean using local database for the region, not a network-based service. They're - opposed to doing a local service well rather than it being their long term goal. They - explicitly aim to lock out other alternatives and deter local location detection via - Wi-Fi.