Scope Location

DeletedUser245

Hi there, maybe this is a silly question but it possible to fake a location like set a certain "area" in a map and make the scope to give the app random locations on that area?

Of course this shouldn't be useful for maps if you are lost but for those apps that "need" (no need) your location to do something

treequell

DeletedUser245 The GrapheneOS team are planning to develop a feature like this

DeletedUser245

treequell wohoooo

looped_around

treequell not to wake the dead, but I was wondering if they were still considering a location scope setup, or it exists and I'm to confused to figure out how to get it to work?
I've been searching and having limited luck.

N1b

Awesome to see GOS getting better despite being the best already :)

Until the feature arrives, you might be interested in IVPN. They have a "Mock Location" setting that matches your location with the VPN server location, but they say themselves it's not foolproof and I'm sure location scopes will be better. Maybe for now it's enough for your needs and threat model though.

DeletedUser245

N1b thanks for the info

nodsocket

I have a printer that forces you to use an app, and checks your GPS location to make sure you are next to the printer. That way they can charge you extra to use the printer remotely. I would love to have the ability to spoof location so I can fix this anti-feature.

de0u

nodsocket I have a printer that forces you to use an app, and checks your GPS location to make sure you are next to the printer. That way they can charge you extra to use the printer remotely.

Wow. Which printer?

Titan_M2

nodsocket That’s insane. Are you sure you actually need the app? The printer has GPS too? Most printer nowadays support IPP everywhere for zero driver printing. Works on GrapheneOS too.

Graphite

nodsocket

Are you sure? Many printers use Wifi-Direct which requires location permission because the app must see nearby WiFi APs and WiFi-Direct devices. The "nearby devices" permission is similar but for Bluetooth LE.

You can also see this with WiFi Analyzer apps. They need "location" permissions because Android understands that triangulating from WiFi access points can be just as good as GPS at determining location.

I'm sure printer manufacturer want to upsell you to a remote print service. But I doubt actual GPS could be used since it's not reliable indoors.

nodsocket

Titan_M2 I have tried printing through the default print service and that works everywhere, but it doesn't format the page properly and it doesn't allow scanning without the app.

de0u

looped_around Not yet.

Dumdum

looped_around https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/4075

wuseman

looped_around
They are probably working on it as we speak. Implementing it is probably trivial, but getting it to actually work effectively/convincingly (Adding jitter, preventing apps from figuring out the location is spoofed, etc) is presumably incredibly challenging.

looped_around

de0u thank you for replying

looped_around

Dumdum thank you! I'm new to github,. Because it's marked enhancement it'll go to pile and added eventually unless seen in roadmap. Even tho there's a link to another one that says not planned and Duplicate. Just confirming I understand how it works so I can fish for myself :) thank you for patience.

https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/4576

looped_around

wuseman they posted the loss of a dev and focus on android 16 so I'm guessing it might be a while. When I checked the roadmap I was looking for a scope not spoofing, I'll check again tho! Maybe we'll get lucky. My hygrometer doesn't need precise location access and won't run without it! Thank you

wuseman

looped_around
I thought scope === spoofing in this case? What would the difference be?

looped_around

wuseman my n00b ignorance lol

kjerehea

Location Scope could switch to an approximate location if the real location was within some predefined area. Would just be a matter of rounding the longitude and latitude to fewer decimal places.