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Show HN: Howmanypeoplearearound – Use wifi to calculate number of people around
- swaqny 9y agoيمكنكم الان الحصول من شركة سوقنى على افضل تصميم مواقع الاستخدامات التى لا احد يقوم بتقديمة من قبل اذا ارت ان تكون صفحتك فى محركات البحث الاول يمكنكم الان الحصول علينا فى اقل وقت http://www.swaqny.com/Web-Design http://www.swaqny.com/Web-Design
- d33 9y ago> $ howmanypeoplearearound > Specify WiFi adapter (use ifconfig to determine): wlp4s0 > [==================================================] 100% 0s left > Found no signals, are you sure wlp4s0 supports monitor mode? Do I need to run airmon first?
- qrv3w 9y agoWhat kind of WiFi chip do you have? Make sure it supports monitor mode (if should list "monitor" when running `iw list`). Although, for reasons I don't understand, this may not be sufficient as my laptop built-in wifi does not see signals although plugging in the TL-WN722N allows it to work just fine.
- mzakharo1 9y agowhat about about mac address randomization?????
- qrv3w 9y agoFor iPhones this only happens when un-associated [1] so this script will probably underestimate the count in public spaces. Although, I'm not sure whether the randomization includes the OUI? [1] http://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/asiaccs2016.pdf http://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/asiaccs2016.pdf
- peterwwillis 9y agoIn addition to collecting rogue broadcasts you can create a new virtual wifi interface in Managed mode with an ESSID like "linksys", "attwifi", or "xfinitywifi" (or all three?) and start collecting frames. This will bring out the people who don't broadcast.
- qrv3w 9y agoThis is a great idea!
- alexchamberlain 9y agoI think that'd be illegal under Misuse of Computers in the UK...
- qrv3w 9y agoI think you are right. In fact, this script might be illegal in some places as was brought to my attention. [1] Do you know if collecting MAC addresses is illegal in UK? In US there is a statue against "intercepting electronic information" [2] but I'm not sure it applies because I don't know whether the MAC address is "electronic information". There is some precedent, as Google got in trouble for sniffing packets, but they were actually definitely capturing information (emails/passwords) on un-encrypted networks. [3] In any case, I put a warning on the README. [1] https://github.com/schollz/howmanypeoplearearound/issues/4 https://github.com/schollz/howmanypeoplearearound/issues/4 [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc.
- olalonde 9y agoUnrelated but how accurate is that 70% statistic? I would have expected that number to be much higher.
- asafira 9y agoAlso, what group of people? the World? The US? San Francisco?
- qrv3w 9y agoPew Research Center says ~77% US adults own smartphones. [1] The director at Pew also tweeted a breakdown by country which shows a lot of variance. [2] Thus, this script won't work at all in a lot of places. [1] http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/ http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/ [2] https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/701798230619590656 https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/701798230619590656
- Kali909 9y agoYeah I'm not sure on that figure. I guess you can determine how many people are around you, that have a phone and it's switched on, with the wifi on as well (I personally turn off everything when it's not being used, mostly for battery reasons on this old clunker).
- helb 9y agoProbably not very accurate, regardless of how many people have smartphones. Unless you know how big that "around" is.
- flor1s 9y agoI'm sure this is already being done at a massive scale. It seems like disabling all connectivity when you are not using it would be good for privacy.
- blowski 9y agohttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23665490
- timrobinson 9y agoTransport for London did this for one week on the Tube last year - https://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2016/11/23/wifi-data-trial-understanding-london-underground-customer-journeys/ https://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2016/11/23/wifi-data-trial-understan...
- zacmps 9y agoThat's harder than you think, it's not even possible to disable all WiFi connectivity on some choosers.
- zacmps 9y agoCan't edit on the app, some *chipsets
- golergka 9y agoIs this an important privacy issue from any practi al standpoint? The 'attacker' only gets a vague idea that some amount of smartphones are working nearby; I can't see any reasons to be concerned with such a privacy 'violation'.
- adolph 9y agoYes and no. Imho the issue at hand is that of a piece to a mosaic of over time and other sensor data. For example, an important piece of data to pharmaceutical companies is which doctors are linked to prescriptions. Some states have rules against disclosing this information. If a company were to monitor target doctor's offices and pharmacies then the distribution data could provide clear indications of who is writing what prescriptions. Would this be a problem? To the degree that prescription filling discloses a health condition that a person considers private, the use of associational wifi monitoring might be seen as a privacy violation. If this is seen as a problem, what could be done? In a sense, I think that the better solution is on the client/protocol side rather than attempting to enforce some "don't sniff" rule. Given the practicalities of updating clients, something on the rules side would have to be done, although I doubt it would be as effective as a speed bump.
- contingencies 9y agoBluetooth equivalent would be cool, then pairing bluetooth and wifi MACs based on temporal correlation. If one changes you can infer from the other. Over time you could split it to howmanylocalsaround verus howmanyvisitorsaround.
- sattoshi 9y agoPeople don't walk around with bt for no reason though.
- pyromine 9y agoA lot of people leave the bluetooth on but just not connected
- codefined 9y agoReally? From what I've seen they turn it off as soon as they can to save battery life.
- kopijahe 9y agoThere's many accessories that rely on bluetooth nowadays: smartwatch/smartband, headset (moreover with the newest trend of ridding the 3.5 mm jack), etc.
- rocqua 9y agoI used to do that, but my new phone has better batteries, so that isn't an issue any more. Combine that with my bluetooth headphones, and it's more convenient to just keep BT on at all times.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoIt's easy to forget. I probably leave my phone's wifi hotspot on accidentally about half the time too.
- remx 9y ago
- oneeyedpigeon 9y agoIs this the same mechanism that Google uses to determine if a place is 'busy' within Maps?
- bjackman 9y agoGoogle have a GPS feed from a good proportion of phones, they don't need to sniff WiFi. Plus they'd have to sprinkle devices for detection throughout the world (I doubt mobile WiFi chipsets do monitor mode)
- Zenbit_UX 9y agoThat's true that they don't need to but it didn't stop them in the past. I remember they got into hot water a few years ago when their mapping cars were going around and monitoring wifi data in range.
- cityhall 9y agoI assumed they had deals with the cellular companies to get aggregate location data to estimate traffic.
- godmodus 9y agoUsed to amuse myself woth fing on my phone - could do statistics of how many sorts of devices are connected to a certain uni router, etc. Also people think ur a hacker. Heh.
- notdang 9y agoDoes this script scan all the channels or just one?
- pagnol 9y agoWith two devices wouldn't it be possible to create a movement profile (disregarding the up direction)? I envision a GUI that lets me go back and forth in time with a slider and visually depicts the positions of phones/people at the time.
- phamilton 9y agoDon't you need 3 devices to track on 2 dimensions?
- pagnol 9y agoYou're right!
- qrv3w 9y agoI haven't done movement profiles, but I used something similar to track smartphone locations with a bunch of Raspberry Pis scattered around. [1] [1] https://github.com/schollz/find-lf https://github.com/schollz/find-lf
- irfan 9y agoIs there a better way to check if an OUI is being used by a mobile phone or a router? e.g. There are plenty of huawei/apple routers and if one of them is in your neighborhood, you'd always get incorrect count. Similarly, there are many infamous smart phones and people use them but your code seems to ignore them.
- qrv3w 9y agoBasically the OUI's I selected are from the ones with the top market share in the United States [1]. The marketshare is totally different in countries like India or Vietnam, so if people use this there they should be aware of this (maybe submit a PR to improve it :) ). I'm open to suggestions to distinguish routers from mobile phones! Perhaps something like monitoring how "static" a mac address is (i.e. routers should never move and would be much less dynamic than signals from phones). [1] https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/comScore-Reports-January-2016-US-Smartphone-Subscriber-Market-Share https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/comScore-Reports-...