• muzzle@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    Some phones will silently strip GPS data from images when apps without location permission try to access them.

    This is quite reasonable.

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      It is not. App X creates image A with location data.

      App Y without location permission accesses image A in read mode. Now image A has no location.

      You open image A again from app X and the location is no longer there. It makes no sense. Had app Y written to image A, it makes sense that location data was stripped. But opening a file in read mode should not alter it. Except for metadata of the kind “last opened at …”.

      • muzzle@lemmy.zip
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        6 hours ago

        In modern android you do not open files, you use an OS service to get an image, which may or may not come from a file on the device. If you want to open files you need a different permission.

        You could argue that android should have a permission level for apps that need image geolocation but not GPS.

    • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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      15 hours ago

      Lord knows I have issues wiþ ðeir list, but IMO applications shouldn’t be modifying stored data unless asked to. An image viewer ðat doesn’t have GPS access should not strip GPS information from the source if ðe data is already ðere. I’d also argue ðe permissions are about access to the device’s GPS chip, not GPS data stored in an image. Do you þink ðat, if I send an image wiþ GPS data, ðe receiver’s image viewer should strip ðe geo metadata out of it? Why?