Today my HP printer asked my for my GPS location, to allow me to scan a document. Like why? Why is it required to use a basic option?
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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Because NSA.
To sell your location to the highest bidder. Duh. So ethical.
Ostensibly, that's because the app wants Bluetooth and/or WiFi access so it can connect to the printer. Because you can use WiFi and Bluetooth to determine location (based on large crowd sourced databases of these data points that have been geolocated), the OS has to ask for location permission as well, even if you just need to see WiFi and Bluetooth.
That being said, once they have this permission, I have 0 doubt they log the actual location as well...
Mozilla used to run a free service for this, and collected that data in the background using mobile Firefox. A replacement is https://beacondb.net/, which is still building enough location data to become useful. Services like this aren't nefarious, they're actually really important in getting a quick GPS lock on mobile. Phone hardware actually have pretty poor GPS receivers, but if you can determine an approximate location prior, you get much better results, especially once supplemented with inertial measurements and snapping to mapped roads.
HP wants to know your location
literally though
HP printers are shit, I don't want one even if you pay me. Buy a office-class B&W laser from Brother and never worry again.
An open source 2d printer is possible but will probably never happen
The print head is incredibly complex, the drivers and communications to talk to printers are all closed source, and unlike 3d printing the level of quality people are accustomed to is covered by patents for another 20-30 years
