The Starlink service has begun notifying customers that starting May 20 of this year, «the location of the satellite antenna will no longer be available through the local device’s gRPC API.»
The Starlink service has begun notifying customers that starting May 20 of this year, «the location of the satellite antenna will no longer be available through the local device’s gRPC API.»
Niche British publication ISPreview points out that gRPC is an open-source software framework integrated into Starlink hardware.
Starlink itself has not said why they are introducing this update to their «location data access» feature, but the publication suggests that this may be a solution aimed at ensuring privacy and security.
The gRPC API, as noted in the material, is known for its high accuracy, allowing the client to see the location of the Starlink antenna in real time, which is usually most useful for third-party software and Starlink resellers.
At the same time, most household consumers probably don’t even know about the existence of this feature.
«The location feature has one drawback: it allows any device on your home network, including guest devices, to silently read your precise GPS coordinates (often bypassing software-level restrictions on location permissions),» the journalists point out.
So they have speculated that SpaceX may now be restricting this feature for security reasons, especially for corporate and military users.
Some Starlink resellers have noted that this move could lead to «reduced troubleshooting accuracy, reduced automation capabilities, and non-compliance with facility-level service agreements.»
Earlier, dev.ua reported that some Starlink terminals in Ukraine allegedly began to disconnect after changes in SpaceX’s usage policy. According to the military, this happened without warning the Ukrainian side. At the same time, the Ministry of Digital Affairs noted that Starlink terminals in Ukraine are currently operating normally.
At the same time, after blocking Starlink , the number of streams from the front to the Russians decreased by 11 times.
