1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
|
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" prefix="og: https://ogp.me/ns#">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
<title>Positon location service | Articles | GrapheneOS</title>
<meta name="description" content="Information about the Positon location service."/>
<meta name="theme-color" content="#212121"/>
<meta name="color-scheme" content="dark light"/>
<meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#ffffff"/>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, viewport-fit=cover"/>
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@GrapheneOS"/>
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@GrapheneOS"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="Positon location service"/>
<meta property="og:description" content="Information about the Positon location service."/>
<meta property="og:type" content="website"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="https://grapheneos.org/opengraph.png"/>
<meta property="og:image:width" content="512"/>
<meta property="og:image:height" content="512"/>
<meta property="og:image:alt" content="GrapheneOS logo"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="GrapheneOS"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="https://grapheneos.org/articles/positon-location-service"/>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://grapheneos.org/articles/positon-location-service"/>
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico"/>
<link rel="icon" sizes="any" type="image/svg+xml" href="/favicon.svg"/>
<link rel="mask-icon" href="[[path|/mask-icon.svg]]" color="#1a1a1a"/>
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png"/>
[[css|/main.css]]
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.webmanifest"/>
<link rel="license" href="/LICENSE.txt"/>
<link rel="me" href="https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS"/>
</head>
<body>
{% include "header.html" %}
<main id="positon-location-service">
<h1><a href="#positon-location-service">Positon location service</a></h1>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
</main>
{% include "footer.html" %}
</body>
</html>
|
