A new feature in iOS 13 asks you if you would like an app to have access to your Bluetooth. Apple added it for privacy reasons, and it is surprising how many apps want access to your signal.
Apps wanting to access Bluetooth will also ask for your consent. Although apps can use Bluetooth to connect to gadgets, like fitness bands and watches, Bluetooth-enabled tracking devices known as beacons can be used to monitor your whereabouts. These beacons are found everywhere from stores to shopping malls. They can grab your device’s unique Bluetooth identifier and track your physical location between places, building up a picture of where you go and what you do often for targeting you with ads. Blocking Bluetooth connections from apps that clearly don’t need it will help protect your privacy.
Some may use it to detect and connect to things like Chromecast. Others likely use it to track your location, presumably to let you know if there is a store nearby, or conversely, to see if you are nearby a store.
Each time your Bluetooth chip gets pinged by a beacon (which are all over the place), the app uses that signal to know where you are. It’s a sneaky way of tracking because it is separate from the iPhone’s location privacy settings. So while users may have their location set to private, these apps can still see where they are.
Now Apple is giving users the heads-up with a notification asking to allow (or don’t) an app to access Bluetooth. The only problem is that the default notification is too vague.
App developers need to tell users why they need access to Bluetooth.
For example, Sling TV uses it to “scan for nearby Cast devices,” and it has changed the notification to say as much. Many other apps only use the default, which tells the user nothing other than that the app wants access.
Regardless, adding this requirement to iOS was a good move by Apple. Once developers that use Bluetooth in their apps find that users are denying them, they are more apt to give them a good reason to allow permission.
