don't require geolocation permission

[mackuba]

The documentation says that the geolocation permission in the manifest allows you to:

use the proposed HTML5 geolocation API without prompting the user for permission.

Which I suppose means that there is a way to use geolocation without asking the user up front, and instead asking them when they first try to use Waggle. However, if I didn't add that permission to the manifest, Waggle simply failed to turn on and immediately showed the error that geolocation is not available. So I don't know how to ask for the permission later, but there should be a way... (This would be preferable, because some paranoid people might not want to install Hive when they see we want to track their location all the time.)

[weilu]

I thought that's the whole point of declaring needed permissions in the manifest file -- telling users what the app could possibly need. It doesn't mean the app will always be tracking your location.

Some browsers show an indicator when your location is being tracked. I don't know if there's any indicator enforced by chrome when it comes to extensions

[mackuba]

If you allow an app to use your location, it means you're giving it permission to access it whenever it wants, and you no longer have control over that. For all you know, the app might be tracking you all the time and sending everything to the NSA. This might be a showstopper for some people, especially since at first glance a Bitcoin wallet shouldn't need your geolocation at all.

[weilu]

Isn't it how browsers currently handle location permission? They ask you once and if you approve, it will allow app at the domain to access your location whenever it wants, until the permission is explicitly revoked by the user.

[mackuba]

Yeah, except a website can only do that while you have it open, which usually isn't very long unless it's GMail/Facebook/etc. (or you're messed up like me and you keep 150 tabs open on average...). An extension, on the other hand, can track you all the time, because it's open all the time in the background. I can't think of any extension that has ever asked me for geolocation access.