Post #3124693

2026-03-28 16:14 UTC

@gmh@mastodon.social @CGM@mastodon.scot As far as I'm aware this being allowed just means "an app can request this permission and you can choose to grant it". I still think it's a cockup bodging these things into the parental controls system so you get these issues, but I don't think it inherently means that your location is being sent anywhere. FWIW: it just worked for me, but that's because I had a credit card in my Apple Pay wallet. My father had issues trying to get it to verify until I added one to his (which was not intuitive in the slightest). And while I think Apples implementation is one of the less intrinsically evil age verification, iOS 26.4 has actively got me to try using a phone with much more OSS system software

Replies (2)

@gmh@mastodon.social 2026-03-28 16:43

@tay@tech.lgbt @CGM@mastodon.scot This really isn’t my speciality (*nix/network/security), so I’d be the first to say ‘I’m not sure’ here… My concern is that the per-app location sharing and age-gated Screen Time restrictions both seem to cover the same area and it seems possible for them to say opposite things at the same time. I don’t want to cause undue alarm, but equally, not being able to stop location sharing could have some really bad consequences, regardless of your age.

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@gmh@mastodon.social 2026-03-28 16:48

@tay@tech.lgbt @CGM@mastodon.scot Also, having read the relevant Ofcom guidelines this week; there are 7 ‘potentially HEAA’ methods; Apple seems to have done a partial implementation of three of them in a way that misses thousands of false negatives and locks down your device as a consequence, without warning you in advance. It’s shoddy stuff. (I’m also not exactly enthused about people trying to shoehorn AV-enabling code into systemd…)

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