This may sound like a silly question, but I was wondering, is it possible to use Organic Maps with something that can detect location but is more private than GPS is? More of a thought experiment than anything. Maybe theres some sort of Geogussr local AI thing that you could hook your camera into to give a very vague idea of where you are. Or maybe detect where you are based on the night sky.
Obviously, you can just turn off GPS and orienteer like our forefathers did
GNSS is extremely privacy friendly. The signals are one-way and the location is calculated locally.
GPS is a “receive only” technology, it doesn’t ping back anything. It is the implementation of apps that decide if the apps ping back to anywhere it wants.
There are other alternative positioning technologies but IIRC GPS and related tech (Europe’s Galileo, the chinese and russian variants) are the ones that are portable enough to be out into small devices like cellular phones.
You can use WiFi and Bluetooth beacons but that requires your own infrastructure to collect beacon information and process them. It also poses the issue of going to places with no populated beacons, or in deserts/isolated places where there are no beacons at all.
As mentioned by the previous responses, GPS, Galileo, etc. are receive only and do not leak your location. Other software or the OS itself on the device that has the GPS receiver are what leak your location.
I believe that Organic Maps will not leak your location. That said, I haven’t personally audited the source for Organic Maps so I am taking what I have read about it as truthful.
So simply put your phone in airplane mode with WiFi and Bluetooth off and use Organic Maps and it won’t give your location away.
Of course, as soon as you connect to the Internet or a mobile network your location will become known to various businesses and perhaps others because of other apps on your phone or the mobile connection protocol itself.
At the risk of going slightly off-topic. It is technically false that all GNSS technologies are exclusively one-way.
For instance, BeiDou implements a two-way communication mode (RDSS) for “improved accuracy.” This mode allows the Chinese government to track the location of users and poses a significant threat to privacy.
Luckily, as long as there are no ground stations in a territory, BeiDou will use the typical one-way signal (RNSS). Nonetheless, the privacy concern of RDSS remains for users in certain Asian countries, including China and Pakistan.
Source and further reading: BeiDou: China’s GPS Challenger Takes Its Place on the World Stage > National Defense University Press > News Article View
Use an external GPS receiver to get the location. Then read the location into your mobile phone.
Don’t let your mobile phone do the GPS-location part. Unless you find a way to read data from the GPS-receiver in your phone direct without the help of the OS.
There is really no privacy or security benefit to doing it that way. If (hypothetically) you do not trust the OS whatsoever, then you also cannot trust the phone to obey the location toggle and stop calculating GNSS location data.
edit: To be clear, there is no reason or evidence to believe this is the case and any such claim is FUD and not constructive.
That’s just some tinfoil hat category recommendations.
If thats true, just dont use app(s) that pings back. Problem solved.
@Mad_Fox how this is supposed to be achieved? There is no easy way of doing so.
Actually, GPS is the most privacy-friendly localtion systems. For example, Galileo is planning on two -way communication, which could hurt privacy.
Please explain what is “tin foil” about the recommandation to minimize (maybe not complete eliminate) the possibility to be tracked?
I am aware it is not easy to implement and there are other ways besides GPS to be tracked/located.
For example every time you connect to the internet. You will know when you use a vpn.
There it is not your phone, but the server. E.g. YouTube gives you ads on a foreign language because location gone wrong. 
See also https://divestos.org/misc/gnss.txt
What does OMA DM have to do with location? I can’t find that mentioned anywhere
A great resource btw
@anonbird
the carrier could use OMA-DM to acquire your location.
Do you have a source for this? I’d be interested in hearing more. As I posted above, such a system already exists in BeiDou.
I don’t remember where I saw it, but this talks about it
Thanks, it seems what I was most concerned about was a A-GNSS user plane which appears counterable by software.