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Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

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Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#41

Post by justcommenting »

hackuser wrote: post #6
crankycoder1975 wrote: post #2

Hi all! We cut a 1.0 release of the Mozilla Stumbler finally. Have at it. File the bugs. Complain about battery life. Help us make this thing not suck and build out a proper open location service.

Congratulations; I hope this gives us a safe, effective, open location service. The privacy policy[1] could be clarified for less technical readers, and even for others. I infer that collected data is anonymous because you write, 1) We receive publicly observable data about WiFi access points and cell towers around you, your estimated latitude and longitude, and the date -- Not associated with anything else, that may…

"fact of life of web server logging" = screw you, we're not even going to consider deleting our logs even as we talk a good line about how much we respect your privacy

edit after downvote: also, mozilla engineering PMs will intimate on hackernews that it won't internally correlate and potentially sell any of the location and other information it most obviously could correlate about people, even though it has already announced its intention to advertise.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#42

Post by zz1 »

justcommenting wrote: post #39
zz1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you have a better suggestion, and am curious to hear about it.

the obvious option is to request consent instead of violating people's privacy and make a dragnet data collection effort like this opt-in instead of opt-out. but that's clearly not the intention here, because how dare anyone question someone else's motives/objectives/priorities for collecting data about devices they don't own. in fact, we're supposed to think this is the "nice" version because a google-funded nonprof…

Did you ever count APs during a short walk in a relatively low density neighbourhood? You have hundreds in under 100m. Tell me, how do you plan to ask each and everyone of them? Ring on every doorbell?

-Sorry, is FritzBox!239?

-No, here is YouMakeTooMuchNoiseWTF

-Oh, I see, could you please pass a message to your neighbour? I'd very much appreciate if he could please fill in this form and send it back through paper mail to Mozilla…

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#43

Post by justcommenting »

icebraining wrote: post #21
[deleted] wrote: post #20

[deleted]

No, Google was sued because in process of doing this, they "mistakenly vacuumed up e-mail messages, user passwords and other communication", that is, they recorded actual data packets instead of just the AP identifier.

does anyone really believe this occurred "mistakenly"?

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#44

Post by Aissen »

zz1 wrote: post #31
Aissen wrote: post #30

Is the wifi AP database downloadable somewhere (OSM/Wikipedia style) or is it "cloudlocked" (we can only query it through the API) ?

https://location.services.mozilla.com/downloads

> wifi AP database

You linked to the download page where there's only the Cell Networks database.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#45

Post by justcommenting »

zz1 wrote: post #42
justcommenting wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the obvious option is to request consent instead of violating people's privacy and make a dragnet data collection effort like this opt-in instead of opt-out. but that's clearly not the intention here, because how dare anyone question someone else's motives/objectives/priorities for collecting data about devices they don't own. in fact, we're supposed to think this is the "nice" version because a google-funded nonprof…

Did you ever count APs during a short walk in a relatively low density neighbourhood? You have hundreds in under 100m. Tell me, how do you plan to ask each and everyone of them? Ring on every doorbell? -Sorry, is FritzBox!239? -No, here is YouMakeTooMuchNoiseWTF -Oh, I see, could you please pass a message to your neighbour? I'd very much appreciate if he could please fill in this form and send it back through paper m…

that would be one respectful way to do it, and yes, challenging.

but the premise of your comment is that of course my device's SSID and related location should be collected in someone else's database because a google-funded nonprofit wrote an app for people to go wardriving with.

just because SSIDs can be legally observed and collected doesn't mean i have to be happy about it. I wasn't talking about this as a technical problem as much as an ethical/political one for an organization that claims to be committed to my privacy...except when it's not.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#46

Post by scrollaway »

justcommenting wrote: post #43
icebraining wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Google was sued because in process of doing this, they "mistakenly vacuumed up e-mail messages, user passwords and other communication", that is, they recorded actual data packets instead of just the AP identifier.

does anyone really believe this occurred "mistakenly"?

Yes, actually. Hanlon's Razor.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#47

Post by pornel »

Aissen wrote: post #30

Is the wifi AP database downloadable somewhere (OSM/Wikipedia style) or is it "cloudlocked" (we can only query it through the API) ?

I can't find the post, but I remember reading that they'd rather not expose full raw data because of privacy concerns — there could be a way to mine this data to de-anonymize users.

I'd love to play with the raw data too, but I understand their concern. So far many "anonymous" large data dumps ended up exposing too much (e.g. recently NY taxi data).

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#49

Post by ZirconCode »

prima-facie wrote: post #38

This is a lot like the Wigle wardrive app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.wigle.wigl...

Wardriving is also the first thing I thought off (Wigle also being my app of choice). Massive co-ordinated wardriving. I can't help but feel that this is a bad idea.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#50

Post by justcommenting »

scrollaway wrote: post #46
justcommenting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does anyone really believe this occurred "mistakenly"?

Yes, actually. Hanlon's Razor.

care to elaborate? are you arguing that saving/processing the full contents of raw captures from monitor mode is somehow easier/cheaper to process than filtering out obviously extraneous information at the point of collection?

that's not at all obvious to me, and and one of the reasons i didn't find google's claims credible.

it seems much more reasonable that they would have realized upfront that limiting the volumes of captured data could have saved considerable time/money.... unless of course they had perceived additional value from capturing more information.

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