Location spoofing spoofs itself
- /e/ version: 1.0
- Device model(s): Fairphone 3+
- Device rooted: no
Summary
(Please forgive me that this is such a wordy summary. I don't know what information would be most relevant.)
Yesterday, I took two two-hour trips by car and used Magic Earth for navigation. On the way there, everything worked as I know and love it, on the way back, it kept showing me the map of a street corner in Manila, and that it didn't have enough memory to calculate the route. (I was not in Manila.) The GPS or Internet connection wasn't particularly strong at the starting point but apart from that, nothing seemed amiss.
I recently updated to /e/OS 1.0, tried Advanced Privacy, didn't immediately find where I could deactivate location spoofing for single apps, and turned if off again (first location spoofing, later the whole thing), to check it out another day.
If I have Advanced Privacy turned on but location spoofing off, the preview window proves that my phone knows where I am, sometimes (that knowledge does not persist outside that settings screen). But most of the time, it shows me some random location or shows the spinning wheel forever, probably trying and failing to figure out the correct location. This behavior is unimpressed by any combination of: changing settings - restarting Magic Earth (or the weather widget, for that matter, or any app that uses the location) – restarting the device, or just one or two of the above. If I turn off Advanced Privacy altogether, the problem persists.
It does "night time tint" the screen according to the random location's local time. So maybe it believes its own spoofing, even when on the "choose location here" screen.
So far, I have not found a way to make my phone know where it really is again.