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computers / comp.mobile.android / Android 13 - NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission

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o Android 13 - NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permissionWally J

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Android 13 - NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission

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From: walterjo...@invalid.nospam (Wally J)
Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android
Subject: Android 13 - NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 12:11:11 -0400
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 by: Wally J - Sun, 10 Sep 2023 16:11 UTC

Folks like Andy Burns may understand the significance of this better than I
can, but they just upgraded my free Galaxy A325G to Android 13 so I looked
up what was in Android 13 in terms of privacy (whether good or bad).

One bad thing (IMHO) Google did long ago was they forced any app that
performed Wi-Fi debugging to _also_ require GPS LOCATION access
(and later even the pernicious FINE_LOCATION) - which I had to ameliorate
by enabling GPS location spoofing.

I hated that, since Wi-Fi and GPS have nothing to do with each other
in that the radios are completely different in almost every way.

Worse, if an uncaring neighbor broadcast his SSID in the clear to Google,
then there was a mismatch between my mock GPS location and his SSID's
location (which shows up on Google Maps - which gets confused by that).

There was no way to turn off the Wi-Fi scanning (because I was doing Wi-Fi
scanning in the first place - in the graphical Wi-Fi debugging utilities)!

It turns out in Android 13, there's a new NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission.
<https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifi-permissions>
"Apps that target Android 13 (API level 33) or higher and manage Wi-Fi
connections should request the NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES runtime permission.
This permission makes it easier to justify an app's access of nearby
Wi-Fi devices; on previous versions of Android, these apps needed to
declare the ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission instead."

I guess the issue with this new feature is it has added Bluetooth!
"The NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES permission is part of the Nearby devices
permission group. This group, added in Android 12 (API level 31),
also includes permissions related to Bluetooth and Ultra-wideband.
When you request any combination of permissions from this permission
group, the system shows a single runtime dialog and asks the user
to approve your app's access to nearby devices. In system settings,
the user must enable and disable the Nearby devices permissions
as a group; for example, users can't disable Wi-Fi access but keep
Bluetooth access enabled for a given app."

I'm not sure the privacy implications, but I never enable nearby devices
permission found in Android 13 on my Galaxy at
Settings > Connections > More connection settings > Nearby device scanning
which (unfortunately) doesn't seem to have a public activity associated
with it so that it will be problematic to make a one-click privacy
shortcut. <https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mobile.android/c/KGDGRm7rUO4>

If you know more about this new-to-Android-13 NEARBY_WIFI_DEVICES
permission, please impart that value upon us as it may be important.

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