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Any idea why wifi isn't leveraged more often? Wasn't there a huge deal about Google maps cars collecting wifi ssids? I never understood why this was a privacy
by ckdarby 7y ago
Any idea why wifi isn't leveraged more often?
Wasn't there a huge deal about Google maps cars collecting wifi ssids? I never understood why this was a privacy issue.
- floatboth 7y ago> I never understood why this was a privacy issue e.g. if you have a rather unique SSID, and someone knows it (say you posted a screenshot of your phone's settings), these databases of access points would pretty much point them to your home address
- Piskvorrr 7y ago1. unreliable + imprecise 2. requires periodic map updates 3. when you actually need it, Murphy guarantees visibility to zero APs
- Fnoord 7y agoOSM and Mozilla both allow to contribute easily to such databases.
- Piskvorrr 7y agoThat's orthogonal to the issue. GNSS gives you a fix anywhere; wireless triangulation gives you a guess in some populated areas (note all the three qualifiers). Moreover, GNSS gives you a 4D fix: [X,Y,Z,t]; triangulation gives you 2D at best: [~X, ~Y]. Worse, easy contribution to a database is still way off from ease-of-use: now the database needs to get to the end devices, which brings in a whole tangled ball of dependencies. Also, last I checked, OSM doesn't deal in wireless maps.