One of my pet peeves is that I do not want Google to know where I am. So I never use GPS if I don’t have to. Which means that as far as Google knows I am out cold at any time except for when I’m out in my boat (I use a GPS based program to find the crab and crawfish pots that I set). This of course bans me from using geofencing, which doesn’t bother me at all. But since my Huawei often kills the iBeacon I use for ESPresense, I would like to try and see if I can do it based on my IP address. And then the app says I can’t if I don’t use the GPS! Is there ANY sensible reason for that, or is it just “yeah, everything uses GPS nowadays, so we’ll just add that as a necessary thing for this”?
Actually telling your ssid is almost identical telling you are at home 
I had moved into a new house recently and used the same ssid and router and google maps thought me i was in previous house for couple of months. So they have a learning algorithm to map ssid to addresses. Giving out ssid information is close to sharing gps permission. On the other hand, when you want to enable gps location sensor, it should ask additional permission, right?
I have no problem with Google knowing that I’m home. 
It’s when I’m not at home I don’t want to share where I go. So sharing that I’m at my wifi isn’t a problem, compared to GPS. And it’s not the giving of a permission, it’s that it’s not even possible to activate ssid logging without activating the GPS!
Unsure if android is the same as iOS. But to get background processes working its tied to movement on the gps sensor I believe. Just how the operating system works
No, that’s not it. Because the BLE beacon can be activated without any GPS involvement.
do I have to give access to GPS to use wifi based location?
Similar to what psyciknz said, I believe it’s part of the Google thing. Google bundled location related permissions into one, so GPS, SSID “nearby” location, and bluetooth presense, are all under one permission / one access.
Not a lot of companies have the means to roll their own framework and API and database and everything, with large enough global coverage, independent to Google. I can think of 2: Apple and Here. But then you are using Android, I suppose that would be a decision you’d have to make.
Here’s to hope that Google would change in the future…(?!)
Yeah, but I doubt it. There’s too much money in knowing as much as possible about us. What they want to know is not how long we are at home, but what shops we visit, I believe.
Anyway maybe it’s possible to make a sensor on the network that pings the phone (which I have given a static IP in my Windows 2019 server) every minute or so and then sets the phone as home when it replies?
instead of using the phone app to say you are home why not set up a router based presence sensor that only knows if you are connected to the router or not.
its a google requirement, no network data if location is off and the app doesn’t have permission
yes but if location keeps turning off when the sensor attempts to update it then becomes disabled until the user explicitly enables it again. The app needs consistent permissions.
@finity Thanks, that sounds interesting! Is that possible to do with an ASUS AIMesh that’s not connected to any cloud services (I don’t use any cloud services for the same privacy reasons I don’t use GPS more than I have to)? If so I’m all for it!
Edit: I see that Hass has an ASUS WRT integration, so I think that will be exactly what I need, thanks! I just need to set up a virtual Hass on the regular house network (all my automation lives on a separate network where only a few ports are accessable from anywhere else).
@dshokouhi Thanks for the explanation! And I will look at the ping, if the router based thing doesn’t work.
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I’m using nmap device tracker
Nmap Tracker - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Anyways, here are all the presence detection integrations. You could reference the list and see what is possible for you:
Integrations - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
I’ll look into the Asus first, but thanks!
They use Mac I’d, not ssid
I suggest you to rephrase it as this was not the case for me. In my new house, I had brand new router and brand new access points all over the place, no left-overs of old mac addresses.
I’m sorry, What I meant to say is that google wifi geolocation uses the AP’s MAC address, not the SSID.