Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

play.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 158 posts

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#61

Post by justcommenting »

Touche wrote: post #53
justcommenting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 technic…

Your SSID is being broadcast on public property. You have no claims of privacy there.

i never disputed the lawfulness of doing this--in fact i explicitly acknowledged it in my last comment.

i'm not making any legal claims to privacy--just pointing out that collecting everything that's lawful to collect runs counter to mozilla's policy stance of being committed to users' privacy.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#62

Post by mdellabitta »

pserwylo wrote: post #52
Icybee wrote: post #48

This seems similar to what Google did to receive massive fines a few years back.

Correct me if I'm wrong, bug I believe the issue with Googles wifi collection was because they had code which intentionally read (and stored?) all data being transmitted over open wifi networks.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/12/google-street-view-settle...

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#63

Post by justcommenting »

maxerickson wrote: post #54
justcommenting wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does anyone really believe this occurred "mistakenly"?

I think it is more likely than not that it was more or less unintended. Meaning that I think there is a good chance that none of the people building up and deploying the collection system had any interest in looking through packet fragments (which is where I would personally draw the mistake/intention line).

i'm mostly with you on this; i don't think anyone working on this project for google actively intended for lots of additional information to be exploited, even in relation to the project.

however i'm much less sympathetic to the notion that google didn't know that lots of additional information would be collected before they started collecting it.

so i think they may not have intended to use it before they started collecting, but i think they intended to collect all of what they collected.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#64

Post by zz1 »

justcommenting wrote: post #45
zz1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 technic…

Since you are underlining the provenance of Mozilla's budget, I guess that when Google stops financing Mozilla everything will change for you. Otherwise you are just lining up words to make a big impression but without any meaning or clue at all.

Don't you want everyone to observe your SSID? Hide it. You are cluttering the public's ether, so you are subject to public scrutiny. Don't you want to add "no_map" to the end of it? Shut up.

Or just do what Buckiminister Fuller told you to do: do not criticize a system but build a new and better one to obsolete the one that don't work. I promise to print your form if you start with a better approach. Unless you are not a complete idiot and understand that it is a theoretically possible way to deal with the problem but not a feasable one. Anyway, go on, just complain and talk nonsense: it will help. A lot.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#65

Post by crankycoder1975 »

justcommenting wrote: post #45
zz1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 technic…

Hey, we're happy to hear about privacy concerns and ways that these might be addressed.

As for collecting your SSID information - devices are already storing SSIDs to do an active scan.

If you're not happy that the Mozilla Stumbler can record that SSID, you should probably also be unhappy that all WiFi devices capable doing a probe request - which is basically all wifi devices.

As far as the ethics concern - I'll bite.

This is one of the privacy reasons why we do not publish the wifi database yet. We haven't figured out a way to do this without exposing too much personal data yet.

We've got some rough ideas on how to do this, but nothing good enough yet that we'd be willing to expose our users to this risk.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#66

Post by crankycoder1975 »

zz1 wrote: post #35
therealunreal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use it a lot a few months back "mapping" my town and I had noticed that it would go at full strength even when I was staying in the same place for hours. Would it be possible to gradually slow down the collections when it detects that the user isn't moving?

There used to be a mode to geo-fence data collection, i.e. harvest only outside of a certain area, but I don't see it anymore.

geo-fencing was extremely rarely used. I think we had single digit numbers of people who enabled the feature and understood what it meant.

We decided to cut out geofencing because it was confusing to most people and reducing the number of knobs and dials on a program is usually a good thing.

We've got a bug filed to hook the accelerometers though: https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/issues/1107

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#67

Post by crankycoder1975 »

ChrisGranger wrote: post #17

Will this work with WiFi-only tablets? I'd like to contribute but my Kobo Arc device is marked incompatible. I saw in the screenshot on Google Play that there is a WiFi-only report symbol.

YES.

We caught that bug just before release. :)

https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler/issues/1137

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#68

Post by justcommenting »

zz1 wrote: post #64
justcommenting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 technic…

Since you are underlining the provenance of Mozilla's budget, I guess that when Google stops financing Mozilla everything will change for you. Otherwise you are just lining up words to make a big impression but without any meaning or clue at all. Don't you want everyone to observe your SSID? Hide it. You are cluttering the public's ether, so you are subject to public scrutiny. Don't you want to add "no_map" to the en…

i don't think i was the first or the only person to point out the similarity of this data collection program to google's street view program and related legal/policy/privacy issues that arose with it.

as engineers, we often end up offering people choices that aren't really choices. for my grandmother's ISP-provided wi-fi access point, adding no_map to her SSID isn't a choice she's prepared to make, and i don't think those are reasonable expectations for the average user.

when people suggest otherwise, i think that part of what they seem to be arguing is that the technical problem they're trying to solve--often for commercial gain--is more important than being respectful of other people. people shouldn't have to know how to hide their SSID or add "no_map" to their SSID to stay out of large databases by default.

my view is that the world is a better place when information sharing is consensual, even when it's otherwise legal to obtain that information. i think that's a better world than one in which we tell people to hide their SSIDs or add "no_map" to them. i'm interested in building software and systems that respect people and their devices.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#69

Post by paulojreis »

JackC wrote: post #58
paulojreis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really a thing? WTF? I feel very ashamed, as someone who works in IT, everytime this happens. I mean, people can opt-out, of course - but, in order to do that, they need to know what an SSID is, and how to change it. What about people who don't? Will we just assume that they don't care or that their opinion doesn't matter?

Can you say more about your privacy concern here? I'm not seeing it. As far as I know, the sole use of this database is to say, "if you can see this set of wifi networks, then you are probably at this GPS location." It's literally the same thing, except at a different electromagnetic frequency, as saying "if you can see houses with these addresses, you are probably at this GPS location." Kind of like a street map. I…

Your point is wrong from the beginning: I don't have to explain my privacy concerns, and neither do the others who don't know what an SSID is. "Privacy" should be the default and without need for justification, not the other way around.

Re: Mozilla Stumbler 1.0

#70

Post by justcommenting »

crankycoder1975 wrote: post #65
justcommenting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 technic…

Hey, we're happy to hear about privacy concerns and ways that these might be addressed. As for collecting your SSID information - devices are already storing SSIDs to do an active scan. If you're not happy that the Mozilla Stumbler can record that SSID, you should probably also be unhappy that all WiFi devices capable doing a probe request - which is basically all wifi devices. As far as the ethics concern - I'll bit…

"devices are already storing SSIDs to do an active scan" - Not mine, although I would readily acknowledge that I'm in the minority and this is generally a truism.

And thank you for acknowledging privacy concerns over publishing the wifi database, although I'm personally still concerned whenever that information gets aggregated systematically, even if it's internal to Mozilla.

One way I think about privacy for data like this is respecting people's intentions. When most people set up wi-fi, I would argue that their intent is almost never to help Mozilla or Google precisely locate phones or IP addresses; it's to connect wirelessly to the internet. More to the point, it's hard to find out someone's intention without asking them. Kudos to Mozilla for getting people to wardrive consensually; but that may still not make me feel much better if I'm just someone with wi-fi.

Post reply on HN