Hi all, I am trying to make my location show more precisely where I and my family are…and indicate this in the form of a city or even address. On the web there are quite a few API that provide good quality and allow a reasonable amount of requests for free (e.g. positionstack allows max 25.000 /year free )
Now, since these run with a key and registration is needed, they can now map ‘me’ with my IP to a location of my device which raised a question/concern with me wrt to privacy.
Could you please provide your view?
Not sure if you are familiar with owntracks or if it fits your use case but have a look. Also, have a read of some of the writing on geolocation and privacy related topics by this smart guy, Jan-Piet Mens.
Good hunting! or maybe ‘tracking’ 
When running in the background, Owntracks responds much slower then my HA-companion apps on iPhone and Android. So I use HA companion to get lat/lon and API to get the details (at a much lower frequency).
Good info thanks! Interest the owntracks folks seem really on top of how to successfully run app in background on iOS and Android. I always appreciate devs who really understand the environment they work in. The documenting they do on their mobile apps is impressive. You should reach out to them with your findings.
I checked their website and their community and the behavior I see is as-expected. But just to be clear, I have update frequency differences between Android phones as well, one goes every 30 sec when moving, the other 3-4 minutes…owntracks always falls behind when running in background, on accuracy and update but when run in foreground it is good…not what I want though
And adding… my conern/topic is data / privacy… when regisetring for owntracks or others, how to know what they do with your data.
Owntracks seems big enough to have more regulation but the API of e.g. ‘positionstack’… I have no clue if I am providing my data to a sub-chinese organization or (if not) they sell l my behavior to others…
There is no such thing as a free ride and thus a price to ‘free’ services …I do get that, but geolocation comes really close to your front door.
Good info, thanks. With owntrack, you host your own server. This is why I recommended it to you. IMHO, if you are using Android phones, you have much bigger things to worry about.
Good luck!
I did not know Owntracks as an own server, been using the web stuff…and true…if Android…there are other things to worry about 