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Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret (nytimes.com)
Dozens of companies use smartphone locations to help advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it's anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is. From a report: The millions of dots on the map trace highways, side streets and bike trails -- each one following the path of an anonymous cellphone user. One path tracks someone from a home outside Newark to a nearby Planned Parenthood, remaining there for more than an hour. Another represents a person who travels with the mayor of New York during the day and returns to Long Island at night. [...] An app on the device gathered her location information, which was then sold without her knowledge. It recorded her whereabouts as often as every two seconds, according to a database of more than a million phones in the New York area that was reviewed by The New York Times.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States -- about half those in use last year. The database reviewed by The Times -- a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company -- reveals people's travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
At least 75 companies receive anonymous, precise location data from apps whose users enable location services to get local news and weather or other information, The Times found. Several of those businesses claim to track up to 200 million mobile devices in the United States -- about half those in use last year. The database reviewed by The Times -- a sample of information gathered in 2017 and held by one company -- reveals people's travels in startling detail, accurate to within a few yards and in some cases updated more than 14,000 times a day.
Google doesn't need to share your GPS location in order to serve you the proper ad, they just need to know your location. They can serve you that ad without sharing that location to anyone.
Uh, what? Google has been doing this for at least 15 years. Location based advertising.
I was basically going to say something similar but add that iOS only allows an app access to location service "while using the app", otherwise, permission is refused by default.
Apple are pathological about battery usage, and quite rightly also take privacy far more seriously than most other companies, thus the reason iOS allowed you control over apps well before Android starting implementing similar controls - minus Google services that is, because, you know, Google is All Knowing.