Board Game Arena

I was at a board game convention last week, eating lunch and browsing on my iPad when I received a message from a BGA user I didn't know saying, "I assume you're by the pool." -- which I was.

Apparently, the BGA friends icon in the upper-left portion of the header will not only tell you about your friends, but will also tell you about _any_ BGA players who are physically near you.

I recognize this was only possible because I had enabled location tracking on my device's browser, but regardless -- why in God's name does BGA think this is something anyone wants? This isn't Tinder. BGA exists solely to play board games with people remotely -- the usernames of people currently on BGA who are in my same general vicinity is 100% irrelevant to why I'm on the site.

I found no option on my profile to turn this "feature" off. My only recourse would be to turn location services off for my browser as a whole (which would negatively impact my experience on all the sites for which knowing my location is actually important).

Is it unreasonable for to me expect that just because a website _can_ track my location, they won't broadcast it to strangers near me without my permission?

I had the same story and didn't like it at all. It was not even at a convention bur it was randomly in a country side home.

Also, did we accept those conditions anytime while subscribing on the website?

Thank you for your message, I didn't realize myself the information was coming from my location setting.

I do notice sometimes that some random users pop up in the "Friends" area.

Usually, these users are ones I just finished playing with, or ones I currently play with.
Also, almost all times, the users seem to have different countries set on their profiles.

Are you sure that a non-friend player's name appearing in your "Friends" area equals "nearby"? Or ONLY "nearby"?
If for instance I have another secondary account, and I log in from a different device, then yes, an account appears in the other one's "Friends" area (because both my devices are nearby).
But I also think some usernames appear there as in some sort of a bug (I presume it has to do with having recently played with those specific users).

It's kind of freaky, regardless; if for instance you're technically alone for a distance of 3 kilometres and some random name appears there...

Were you possibly using the same wifi as the person who was "near" you? Because I think the feature is based on having the same IP rather than on a location tracker.

During lockdown I played with co-workers on BGA and as we where using work pc's we had VPN that gave us all the same IP. And we got that message even though we were geographically spread out. It helped us find each other, so for us it was kinda neat, but I can also see how itcan be rather freaky.

ETA: I do not have location tracker turned on by the way

Maybo wrote: ↑03 January 2023, 17:01 Were you possibly using the same wifi as the person who was "near" you? Because I think the feature is based on having the same IP rather than on a location tracker.

During lockdown I played with co-workers on BGA and as we where using work pc's we had VPN that gave us all the same IP. And we got that message even though we were geographically spread out. It helped us find each other, so for us it was kinda neat, but I can also see how itcan be rather freaky.

ETA: I do not have location tracker turned on by the way

Right, are you sure it isn't the IP situation? I have never experienced this and I have my location on for my internet. I used my phone to play BGA at a convention but I didn't have a friend pop up, but I also used a VPN. I am wondering if it is picking up people sharing the same IP.
All of you that experienced this, were you on public or shared wifi's?