This is a pretty disturbing trend. Just recently I ran into problems with a TV station's app on iOS that refused to play video without Location Services Enabled. I don't mind a general region being disclosed, but the house-level accuracy of the location data definitely creeps me out. I don't think the general public realizes location can be equivalent to a person's id.
> I don't mind a general region being disclosed, but the house-level accuracy of the location data definitely creeps me out.
This is exactly what I want most of the time. My ISP's servers are usually in neighboring cities, so geoip isn't precise enough, but GPS is too precise for my needs. I just want to disclose what city I'm in. This is enough info to give me useful results (e.g. I search Google for "italian restaurants", it gives me results for my city first) without violating my privacy by giving Google my location habits. Maybe OSes could give an option to reduce the granularity of the location reported, so you could disclose the town or state, but not the exact street, for instance.
There are apps to "fake" your location so maybe you can find a suitable one. I never used one but my external Bluetooth GNSS device feeds its accurate location into Android the same way. Please share if you do find a good one!
>>>Just recently I ran into problems with a TV station's app on iOS that refused to play video without Location Services Enabled.
When it comes to things such as entertainment, regional rights restrictions probably have more to do with that than the app wanting to spy on you. I'm not saying this is right. Just saying how the lawyers have sliced things into pieces like that.
They could get that region-level information already from ISP routing info. This ratcheting up of info means: The household owner's name, their affluence, postal code, phone number, a cross match with google street view and all info that shows (new car?). The last thing I want is to watch a home reno show on a tablet and then be deluged with phone calls soliciting for new windows. This is definitly not 'right'.
(edit: on top of watching ads that glitch and repeat.)
>>>They could get that region-level information already from ISP routing info.
I think they want to know you are where you say you are. You'll find if you travel out of the area -- particularly out of the entire country -- you won't have access to entertainment you had while at home due to these regional restrictions. Just think of the times when you've gone to the BBC website to view a video only to be told you can't have it outside of the UK (the BBC license area). (Note that I'm assuming you're in the US although your use of "postal code" likely means you aren't.)
