Android: Location Permission

Browser Support Mobile Support
1

Description of the issue:
According to the wiki, Brave only requests the location if some website requests it. Since the latest update though, Brave asks for location permission even when started without loading a website. How come?

Reproduces how often:
Everytime.

Brave Version(See the About Brave page in Settings):
1.2.0

Mobile Device details
OnePlus One - LineageOS 16.0

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2

I can confirm this behaviour.
A privacy focused browser requesting my location at every startup sounds like a joke to me.

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3

huh?
Brave doesn’t ask for location @ startup

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4

In my case it does not ask me for location almost at any time and in the cases that it has done it I have not been able to confirm due to the existing problem that the pop-up window is frozen.

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Of course you won’t get a location request dialog if you accepted or denied location access by Brave. Like @seth123 I’m running LineageOS which has the Trust feature and depending on configuration may ask and inform you about the requests even if Brave got the location permission.

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I insist, I cannot confirm or deny website push notifications, nor confirm or deny website placement request, Due to the freezing of the dedicated popup window.

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This issue is not about freezes of popups, but about Brave requesting location without a reason.

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Did some more testing: Brave asks for location every time I regain connection.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Put phone in airplane mode.
  2. Open arbitrary website in Brave.
  3. Activate Wi-Fi.
  4. Go to Brave. It will now ask for your location about three times.
  5. De-activate Wi-Fi, go to step 3.

It actually does not matter if the permission to access my location is blocked in “Site settings”.

I agree with pjul. You might only be able to see these location demands if you are using LineageOS 16.0.

Is there a way to track permission demands like this? For example with adb logcat?

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I’ve got another detail which I didn’t recognize before. The LineageOS Privacy Guard is specifying the type of location permission requested as “Scan Wi-Fi networks”. That’s the explanation why the steps to reproduce as described by @seth123 are related to Wi-Fi activation.
To give some “evidence” and finally get a response by some Brave developer I’m providing a screenshot…

Brave_Wifi_scan_marked
Brave_Wifi_scan_marked720Ă—1480 111 KB

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Thanks @pjul, nice find.

Looks like this thread is going to be closed automatically tomorrow.
I have escalated the issue to GitHub. We should be able to continue discussing this issue there.

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This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.