noman-land parent
Simply your IP address can be used to track you so any app or website you visit knows roughly where you are with every http request unless you use an always on VPN. It can also fingerprint you in various ways without the need for any special permissions.
Agree with you about fingerprinting (also a bummer). I guess the difference here though is that I must be actively engaging with a website in order for it to be tracking me, but an app (I assume) can be tracking me basically whenever it wants.
An app on iOS doesn’t just run constantly in the background unless it’s playing sound or using the GPS. For almost everything else you can explicitly turn off “allow background refresh” on a per app basis
Then the VPN provider does geolocation instead and get the list of hosts you accessed
At the very least the VPN provider promises not to and their reputation depends on their not being caught doing this. Whereas your ISP and various sites you visit will already be collecting this data no matter what.