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In a minor privacy win for Android users, Google announced today that Chrome’s Android app will now have the ability to share your approximate location with websites, instead of giving them access to your precise location. The feature gives you a bit more flexibility, without giving up your privacy to random websites. For example, if you’re just looking for information about the weather or something else in your general area, there’s no need to share your exact GPS coordinates. And of course, you’ll still be able to share precise location data if you’d like.
Google says approximate location sharing is also coming to Chrome on desktops “in the coming months.” As you’d expect, there will also be new APIs to let developers specify what sort of location data their websites need. “We encourage developers to review their location needs and only ask for precise location when it’s required for the site functionality,” a Google representative wrote in email about the new feature.
It’s unclear what Google’s plans are for Chrome on iOS, but iPhone and iPad users have had the option to enable approximate location data on for specific apps for a few years now. That won’t give you the nifty granularity of choosing your location data for every website, of course, but it’s a useful option if you’re concerned about privacy.
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