Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#2SSIDs are a signal you broadcast to identify yourself. if you don't want people receiving that signal, stop broadcasting it. if i stand on my roof and shout at the top of my lungs "HEY LOOK AT ME", i can't then expect people not to look at me. broadcasting your SSID is essentially the same thing, and you can't blame google for the fact that your router does this. pretty much any router will allow you to turn off SSID broadcast.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#3Can someone explain what this wi-fi mapping means? What are its implications?
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#4At least Google offers an opt-out option. As far as I know neither Apple nor Skyhook do.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#5Can someone explain what this wi-fi mapping means? What are its implications?
That is what is powering the geolocation service for Firefox and Chrome.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#6Does anyone have a reason for why this wifi mapping invades my privacy?
I just can't see what makes it so wrong, I mean I am not ecstatic about my router mac and general area being tied together but is it easy for someone to find where I am based on what wifi I am connected to through a browser?
The only time I see it being a problem is if you have malware and they are able to target you by location but depending on what malware you are infected with it might be just as easy for the malware users to look somewhere else for location.
Maybe I am just being dense.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#7Can someone explain what this wi-fi mapping means? What are its implications?
Generates a mapping of geolocation -> SSID of access points. Used as a fingerprinting method to locate users in the real world, very useful when you're working with mobile or ubiquitous computing.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#8SSIDs are a signal you broadcast to identify yourself. if you don't want people receiving that signal, stop broadcasting it. if i stand on my roof and shout at the top of my lungs "HEY LOOK AT ME", i can't then expect people not to look at me. broadcasting your SSID is essentially the same thing, and you can't blame google for the fact that your router does this. pretty much any router will allow you to turn off SSID…
Exactly. It seems as if the OP just wanted to score some karma points with the sensationalist headline and ridiculous article header graphic. If you don't want your broadcasted SSID to be potentially indexed by Google, or by me as I walk by, then don't broadcast it. Simple.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#9SSIDs are a signal you broadcast to identify yourself. if you don't want people receiving that signal, stop broadcasting it. if i stand on my roof and shout at the top of my lungs "HEY LOOK AT ME", i can't then expect people not to look at me. broadcasting your SSID is essentially the same thing, and you can't blame google for the fact that your router does this. pretty much any router will allow you to turn off SSID…
You don't have to broadcast an SSID (the human-readible name for the access point) for Google's system to pick it up. I'm pretty sure (based on some packet sniffing I've done on the Android Google Maps app suite) that Google's grabbing the BSSID, the MAC-address-like thing that uniquely identifies a Wifi wireless device.
Even if you turn off SSID broadcast, your router will still send out broadcasts of some sort.
Re: Google is mapping your wi-fi access point and the opt-out options stinks
#10Google is mapping publicly broadcast wifi access points to provide location services to augment GPS (faster locks for example) or when GPS is unavailable due to location or device. It's a very useful service - if you use a smartphone with mapping software, you likely benefit from this on a daily basis without realizing it.
Apple does the same thing, although they collect it from user's iphones and ipads: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27Apple-Q-A-on-Locat...
One of the original companies that did this was skyhook and they also use vehicles driving around: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/
Google is actually going above and beyond normal industry privacy protections by offering a reasonably simple opt-out. They are recommending that others in the industry do the same. Calling instead for an opt-in system effectively destroys this whole service's effectiveness for everyone.