Mapping companies rely on the fact that their crowdsourced data is reliable.
Emergency services rely on the fact that phones share accurate locations.
Delivery companies require authentic location data from their agents.
Apps that allow people to rent scooters or bicycles rely on non-fake location data.
If you made it easy to provide fake location data, a lot of apps would suddenly have to deal with a whole new class of fraud. I just don't see how this would be a net beneficial change.
There's a way to fix this. Each bicycle can store a private key, and your phone needs to talk to the bike nearby to do a live challenge-response before you can rent it out.
Since I paid for my phone, I really don't see why it's incumbent on me to help the latter case out. A delivery company is free to supply a managed device or fit a device to their trucks. A crowdsourcing company should in any case already be assuming all client data is suspect and ensuring it's properly correlated with other sources of information.
There's no fraud here. The worst case outcome in your list is perhaps a delivery agent just having their phone say they've done a particular route when they just sat in the movie theatre or whatever, but the fact that none of their packages got delivered is enough to out them even if the shipping company is trying to get location data for free from a device the shipping company doesn't even own.
If I hire a bike I'm nowhere near I still pay for it. Denial of service attacks in which the perpetrator is fully responsible for the cost of resources consumed just aren't a thing that happens.
The only group involved in these scenarios that's taking adverse action against another party for their own gain is the entitled companies demanding users' phones be locked down so they can continue to get material gain from them without compensation. The net benefit here is that these companies' profits should definitely be taking a back seat to users' rights.
Consumers actually want to use services offered by companies, and willingly accept what you consider drawbacks. We want accurate traffic data in maps, and crowd-sourced key finders, and all the other conveniences afforded by unspoofable location data, and we give up a little bit of control in exchange for that.
Companies don't compensate us with money for crowdsourced data; they compensate us by offering services they couldn't offer otherwise.
The ‘us vs them’ mindset comes from ‘then’ determining what is acceptable for ‘us’ to do purely because it’s good for ‘them’.
If I want to set my location to somewhere I am not, and the only reason I can’t is corporate interests, then a battleground has been drawn up by those interests, not me.
Companies in general don't want reliable data for the fun of it; they want it in order to provide services that users want.
Do I care? Like not to be glib but as an end user buying a phone for my personal uses, I dont care about their businesses and I loathe the idea that their business model requires such an anti feature to be widely deployed in personal devices such as smart phones.
Tell you what. I have a business model that requires your personal location data. Be a dear and send it to me.
And again, why do I care about caller ID. It's been trash for years. I just never answer calls and use diffetent platforms such as Signal to communicate with my friends.
It may open the door to so many frauds, but it opens the door to so many more abuses.
People will talk about these 'features' differently the first time a large genocidal action takes place that makes use of this data.