[lxgr]

There is indeed such an API, and frustratingly there does not seem to be a way of preventing apps from doing it.

My contact with this was via "iPass", which was a Wi-Fi subscription that also included many in-flight network providers.

I was not really interested in connecting to thousands (in my city alone!) of horribly slow, insecure networks on the ground, but it was all or nothing, and required reinstalling the app every time.