24 ms·

This is a bit like saying: Strangers looking for house #48 on my street are not allowed to look at my door and use my street number #42 on it to orient themselv

by sly010 5y ago

This is a bit like saying: Strangers looking for house #48 on my street are not allowed to look at my door and use my street number #42 on it to orient themselves. I am all for privacy, but this is a bit paranoid. Google is not distributing any information about an access points. A phone using wifi based location services simply listens to already existing SSID broadcasts. If you don't want your SSID broadcasted, turn off the broadcast. Is there aspect of this that I don't understand?

Kim_Bruning 5y ago
It makes the laws really complicated too. Normally, I don't think there's an expectation of privacy for things that you transmit with a radio transmitter, so AFAIK it's still (mostly?) ok to own a radio receiver that can receive (almost) anything anyone transmits. (almost, because things like radar detectors are already illegal in some jurisdictions.) I think there's a tradeoff here. Having people carve out more and more frequencies that become illegal to monitor might not actually make the world a better place in the long run.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Interestingly, this varies from country to country, but in the US: yes. With very, very few exceptions, the law errs on the side of "If it's broadcast, anyone may receive it." Don't broadcast things you don't want received.
  - teraflop 5y ago
    Legally, Wi-Fi communications in the US are not considered to be "broadcast", even if anybody sufficiently nearby can receive them. If you're not the intended recipient of a message, and you intentionally intercept it (or attempt to do so), and the content isn't "readily accessible to the general public", then you're breaking the law. Google was successfully sued over this, and to my knowledge the law has not been changed in the decade since then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc. In particular, the SSID of a network is readily accessible to anyone with a Wi-Fi device, whereas the contents of data packets (even unencrypted ones) are not accessible unless you have packet-sniffing software and know how to use it. This seems to me like a fairly common-sense interpretation. You can still own general-purpose radio receivers (subject to the usual FCC rules about radiated emissions and so on). The legal restrictions are about what you can do with that equipment.
    - betterunix2 5y ago
      "If you're not the intended recipient of a message, and you intentionally intercept it (or attempt to do so), and the content isn't "readily accessible to the general public", then you're breaking the law." ...if true, then wifi itself is illegal, because every wifi station will "intercept" (i.e. receive) frames transmitted by nearby stations in order to avoid interference when attempting to transmit a frame.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        It would not at all surprise me to learn that large swathes of technology are technically illegal, just not anticipated (or properly understood by the right people) or against the 'spirit' of the law.
        betterunix2 5y ago
        Perhaps, but given how tightly regulated radio is in general and how closely wifi device makers work with regulators (e.g. look at DFS/TPC in the 5Ghz band) it would surprise me if one of the core technologies of wifi (CSMA) was in such a precarious legal situation.
        OJFord 5y ago
        Oh I don't mean I would ever expect it to play out precariously, just that it would be an awkward technicality of the way something happened to be phrased, and fixed when noticed/required.
      - teraflop 5y ago
        A Wi-Fi station is an inanimate object that is incapable of breaking the law. The law applies to what people (or legal entities) do. Sure, whenever somebody else sends a Wi-Fi packet in your vicinity, the components in your phone are physically reacting to the signal that they receive, and inspecting the data to see if you're the intended recipient. If the packet is addressed to somebody else, and your device never stores or displays the payload, then obviously you are not intentionally intercepting anything. The law assumes judges and juries are human beings, who have at least a modicum of intelligence and common sense. It's not a mathematical formalism in which the slightest contradiction lets you prove absurdities.
- mason55 5y ago
  You’d have to legislate what you can do with the data. Saying that you’re not allowed to receive random broadcasts would make it so you basically couldn’t connect to wifi APs.
  - teraflop 5y ago
    According to US law, what's against the law is intercepting communications that are not readily accessible to the public. A Wi-Fi beacon containing an SSID is not a communication intended for somebody else, so there's no legal issue with receiving it. The restrictions are on how the hardware is used, not what it's technically capable of.
- betterunix2 5y ago
  If monitoring the ISM bands was illegal, wifi would be illegal. Wifi stations continuously monitor the channel they are using to avoid interference and will typically monitor the whole band during the frequency selection process (i.e. searching for the least-crowded channel when setting up the AP). The fact that the ISM bands are basically a free-for-all is one of the best regulatory moves in the history of radio, since that has basically made the diverse market for wireless consumer electronics possible (including wifi and bluetooth, two of the greatest inventions in consumer electronics in my lifetime).
Macha 5y ago
How do they know where my SSID is? Is my phone sharing that info with them? Did they grab it with Street View cars? Is their advertising now using the SSIDs I pass by to track me even when I explicitly turn off GPS? If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? Do I need to track all them down and find how to opt out of them having a database of my frequent locations?
- gruez 5y ago
  > How do they know where my SSID is? Is my phone sharing that info with them? Did they grab it with Street View cars? It's crowdsourced from android devices (apple does the same with iOS devices). AFAIK google also grabs it with street view cars. >Is their advertising now using the SSIDs I pass by to track me even when I explicitly turn off GPS? >If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? Yes, but AFAIK on android grabbing SSIDs require the "location" permission for this exact reason. >Do I need to track all them down and find how to opt out of them having a database of my frequent locations? That's on them, not google.
- snthd 5y ago
  >If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? I don't know. But in countries without strong privacy laws the carrier can sell something similar as triangulated by the cell network. https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-access-to-real-time-location-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-acces...
- pelorat 5y ago
  > How do they know where my SSID is? Is my phone sharing that info with them? Yes if you have it turned on and you're signed into Google. > Is their advertising now using the SSIDs I pass by to track me even when I explicitly turn off GPS? Turning off GPS stops GPS, not SSID tracking. Modern Android doesn't have a GPS toggle though. It has a "Location" toggle which stops the OS from sending the data to Google. However it does not turn off the location feature in Google Chrome (or other web browsers). > If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? Google doesn't share their data with 3rd parties. > Do I need to track all them down and find how to opt out of them having a database of my frequent locations? No.
nullc 5y ago
Because of these databases if I get near you when you're using your computer, I can tell where you live: Your computer will poll for the SSID it's setup to auto-associate to (as they may be hidden). I get the SSID of your home network, and look it up in the database. How creepy is it that these two not very privacy interrupting things -- collecting observed SSID in the wild, and your laptop attempting to connect to things it knows essentially broadcasts your home address when you're at a conference or a coffee shop? Hope you never have a stalker. Worse, google's "opt out" procedure makes your SSID more unique and makes this attack even more effective.
- efraim 5y ago
  How do you look it up in their database?
  - fny 5y ago
    Here's one: https://wigle.net https://wigle.net
    - onionisafruit 5y ago
      I just queried my home ssid on there. I thought it was a pretty unique pun, but 216 other access points have the same ssid. If my phone was probing for it then you could narrow me down quite a bit, but you would need more than that.
      - lazide 5y ago
        If you used the other SSIDs your phone was looking for and cross referenced, I bet confidence could get a lot closer to certain - 99%?
      - modderation 5y ago
        I'd agree that a basic mapping of SSID name to approximate location is a bit useless on its own, but it can be combined with other information to narrow down your physical location. Geographically speaking, how were those SSID's distributed? Were they spread all around the world, across the continent, or were they all in the same city? For example, if your home SSID was known and those 216 SSID's were spread around the world, your home could likely be narrowed down based on some general facts from forum posts. "You spell honor with a U! You often complain about the rain on the forums, and those posts came from that ISP's IP block! According to the public coverage maps for that ISP in that English-speaking country that uses British spellings, your wireless network overlaps with this side of the street, give or take 30m. Let's check it out!" Paranoid fantasy? I truly hope so.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mrighele 5y ago
I think that it is important to consider the reason _why_ we make some information public. We make our SSID public so that we, or our friends, can easily access our WiFi, not so that somebody else use it as a tracking tool. Just because I make something possible, it doesn't mean that somebody else should take advantage of it ("hey, your car was unlocked, so of course I took it for a ride"), even more so when we talk about a huge corporation where the effort of taking advantage of this is much more than the effort that an individual must put to protect him/herself. Want to use my SSID as a location tool ? I'm fine, but first you ask, and the let's talk about how much you're gonna pay for it.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Want to use my SSID as a location tool ? I'm fine, but first you ask, and the let's talk about how much you're gonna pay for it. Should companies have to ask you to use your house number as a location tool?
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Yeah, curious, it's like when someone calls a taxi and says "Well I'm on Elm Street, I see the house in front of me has the number 73.". That number isn't on display for this person to use, it's more for your friends and mailmen to find your house, but well... I guess the problem is the worldwide database it's put in.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >I guess the problem is the worldwide database it's put in. Why is it a problem to know the gps location of a specific street name + house number? That seems like a pretty useful piece of information, especially in north america where a single street can span the entire width of a city. As for the downsides, what's the privacy implications of knowing that 73 elm street is located at -52.024290244005,101.13123390478796?
    - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
      The scale is exactly the problem. The social contract of what's acceptable for friends, mailmen, or passersby hailing a cab does not apply when extended to automated processes running on computers of global megacorps. I have no issue with a police officer tailing and tracking a suspect with license plate ABC1234. That license plate number is publicly visible information. I do take issue with the police installing license plate cameras that give them a location history of the entire driving population of a city. I have no issue with an acquaintance recognizing me by the shape of my face. If I go out in public, I expect to be publicly visible. I do take issue with Facebook running facial recognition on photos taken by their users, or installing their own facial recognition cameras, and sending advertisements and connection suggestions to me based on my proximity to other people. I have no issue with my neighbor, trying to connect his wifi, seeing my SSID alongside his. The router needs to broadcast a publicly visible management beacon so that he can locate his wireless network and I can locate mine. I do take issue with Google making a global database to allow devices to use the visible SSIDs to determine their location. I have no issue with a web server querying my browser to see what system fonts I have available, or what size my browser window is. These and other bits of information are useful to display the website I'm requesting to me. I do take issue with the server or their advertising partners using these characteristics to construct a fingerprint to track me across sessions or sites. I recognize that there's no empirical difference between these uses. Public information is public, it's not obvious why the source should be able to determine how it's used or where the line is between acceptable, intended, private party use and unacceptable, automated, exploitative use. But I think I know what's acceptable when I see it.
snthd 5y ago
>Google is not distributing any information about an access points. They are - they answer the question "where is the AP with this BSSID?" repeatedly. Not a public api? Just get an ap, change the BSSID and put your android phone in a faraday cage with it. Domestic abuse victim in hiding but still has the old AP/wireless printer? Thanks Google!
- anchpop 5y ago
  has anything remotely like that happened in the years google has operated this service?
lima 5y ago
> Is there aspect of this that I don't understand? Yes - it's very useful for access points which change location often.
SuchAnonMuchWow 5y ago
Because the number of your house is there for strangers to identify your house. Your SSID is there for you to connect to your private network. The fact that it is broadcasted is a technical limitation, and it is not intended for others beside you. Nobody besides technical people know that the SSID broadcasting can be disabled, and even less know how to use their wifi when it is disabled.
- dgl 5y ago
  This is the crux of the issue to me, they've now made a privacy opt-out that requires you to broadcast an SSID, in order for their systems to ignore your BSSID. If they don't have an alternative to this opt-out then there's probably a GDPR case right there.
css 5y ago
> If you don't want your SSID broadcasted, turn off the broadcast Hiding the network name doesn't conceal the network from detection or secure it against unauthorized access. It also makes your devices constantly send out that SSID wherever you go when searching for networks. According to Microsoft [0]: > Non-broadcast networks are advertised in the probe requests sent out by wireless clients and in the responses to the probe requests sent by wireless APs. [0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/tn-archive/bb726942(v=technet.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN#why-non-broadcast-networks-are-not-a-security-feature https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/tn-archiv...
- doc_gunthrop 5y ago
  It's been argued that hiding the network name can make you more of a target because it makes you stand out more than your seemingly more innocuous neighbors. That is unless you never connect any devices to your hidden AP. Like being the only person on the block who blurs out their house on Google Maps or Apple Maps, it could backfire due to the Streisand Effect.
jb775 5y ago
You're missing a major element: the relative measurements of your wifi signal...a.k.a. radar inside your home, visible to people outside your home.[1] Your wireless router sends out a constant signal . That signal bounces off stuff, and can be measured in real time. Once a 3rd party has a calibrated measurement of your wifi signal, they can scan it and make relative measurements in real time. They can reconstruct what's going on in the room by reconstructing the triangulation of how the signal is changing. They've been able to fine-tune it enough to see a person breathing, or see their heart beating. As this technology matures, I believe this will be the next-level of major privacy concerns. [1] https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/ https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/
- myfavoritedog 5y ago
  What does that have to do with Google's use of your SSID? If someone wants to use your SSID signal to image what's going on in your house, they don't need to have first gotten your SSID from google's mapping database.
smsm42 5y ago
What is surveillance if not just looking at you? So if you object to the state or private actors being able to track you every movement through the public space, you essentially are advocating for banning people from looking at you when you walk the street. Somehow it doesn't seem the same though. Somehow intuitively it seems different when people just look at you on the street and when some organization compiles a single database where every move of every person is recorded.
Sebb767 5y ago
If I pass by in front of your house, I can see through your windows. If I walk behind you, I can see what you do. Both are somewhat socially acceptable. If I livestream you the whole time and archive the video of everything you do and everything visible in your windows, I bet you'd not feel as comfortable. This is exactly the problem here: Your neighbours or passerbys seeing your SSID is not much of a problem, but a total stranger anywhere in the world finding your address only by (B)SSID is a problem. Especially since these are usually not considered sensitive; you can find quite a few posts showing fun WiFi names or tech support posts were the ID is visible. Hell, maybe some streamers inadvertently show them because they don't know the implication! Combine that with rough information of where the user is from (country should suffice) and you can come knocking on their door. The real problem here is that we usually are very protective of our actual address. These databases make SSIDs equally sensitive data, without people being aware of this.
- mankyd 5y ago
  > but a total stranger anywhere in the world finding your address only by (B)SSID is a problem. I am not sure I follow. Total strangers can find my address by looking up ... my address. My ssid is probably _less_ associated with my name and other identifying info than my address is, for that matter. Whereas I regularly supply my address to forms when I sign up for things or order packages for delivery, I never really explicitly give out my ssid. A passerby could collect my ssid. They might be able to narrow it down to my building (or maybe the neighbors), but that's not terribly interesting data to strangers trying to "find my address". There are more direct ways to go about that.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > Total strangers can find my address by looking up ... my address. Is there a global open address book with everyone's addresses?
    - foobarbecue 5y ago
      It used to be called White Pages...
sixothree 5y ago
You didn't provide your address in this post. Why not?
sp332 5y ago
It's saying "this is a mobile hotspot so don't use it to orient yourself."
chairmanwow1 5y ago
Yeah. As someone who used to work for a data privacy company, this is really a non-issue IMO.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by sly010 5y ago

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

It makes the laws really complicated too. Normally, I don't think there's an expectation of privacy for things that you transmit with a radio transmitter, so AFAIK it's still (mostly?) ok to own a radio receiver that can receive (almost) anything anyone transmits. (almost, because things like radar detectors are already illegal in some jurisdictions.) I think there's a tradeoff here. Having people carve out more and more frequencies that become illegal to monitor might not actually make the world a better place in the long run.

shadowgovt 5y ago
Interestingly, this varies from country to country, but in the US: yes. With very, very few exceptions, the law errs on the side of "If it's broadcast, anyone may receive it." Don't broadcast things you don't want received.
- teraflop 5y ago
  Legally, Wi-Fi communications in the US are not considered to be "broadcast", even if anybody sufficiently nearby can receive them. If you're not the intended recipient of a message, and you intentionally intercept it (or attempt to do so), and the content isn't "readily accessible to the general public", then you're breaking the law. Google was successfully sued over this, and to my knowledge the law has not been changed in the decade since then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joffe_v._Google,_Inc. In particular, the SSID of a network is readily accessible to anyone with a Wi-Fi device, whereas the contents of data packets (even unencrypted ones) are not accessible unless you have packet-sniffing software and know how to use it. This seems to me like a fairly common-sense interpretation. You can still own general-purpose radio receivers (subject to the usual FCC rules about radiated emissions and so on). The legal restrictions are about what you can do with that equipment.
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    "If you're not the intended recipient of a message, and you intentionally intercept it (or attempt to do so), and the content isn't "readily accessible to the general public", then you're breaking the law." ...if true, then wifi itself is illegal, because every wifi station will "intercept" (i.e. receive) frames transmitted by nearby stations in order to avoid interference when attempting to transmit a frame.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      It would not at all surprise me to learn that large swathes of technology are technically illegal, just not anticipated (or properly understood by the right people) or against the 'spirit' of the law.
      - betterunix2 5y ago
        Perhaps, but given how tightly regulated radio is in general and how closely wifi device makers work with regulators (e.g. look at DFS/TPC in the 5Ghz band) it would surprise me if one of the core technologies of wifi (CSMA) was in such a precarious legal situation.
        OJFord 5y ago
        Oh I don't mean I would ever expect it to play out precariously, just that it would be an awkward technicality of the way something happened to be phrased, and fixed when noticed/required.
    - teraflop 5y ago
      A Wi-Fi station is an inanimate object that is incapable of breaking the law. The law applies to what people (or legal entities) do. Sure, whenever somebody else sends a Wi-Fi packet in your vicinity, the components in your phone are physically reacting to the signal that they receive, and inspecting the data to see if you're the intended recipient. If the packet is addressed to somebody else, and your device never stores or displays the payload, then obviously you are not intentionally intercepting anything. The law assumes judges and juries are human beings, who have at least a modicum of intelligence and common sense. It's not a mathematical formalism in which the slightest contradiction lets you prove absurdities.
mason55 5y ago
You’d have to legislate what you can do with the data. Saying that you’re not allowed to receive random broadcasts would make it so you basically couldn’t connect to wifi APs.
- teraflop 5y ago
  According to US law, what's against the law is intercepting communications that are not readily accessible to the public. A Wi-Fi beacon containing an SSID is not a communication intended for somebody else, so there's no legal issue with receiving it. The restrictions are on how the hardware is used, not what it's technically capable of.
betterunix2 5y ago
If monitoring the ISM bands was illegal, wifi would be illegal. Wifi stations continuously monitor the channel they are using to avoid interference and will typically monitor the whole band during the frequency selection process (i.e. searching for the least-crowded channel when setting up the AP). The fact that the ISM bands are basically a free-for-all is one of the best regulatory moves in the history of radio, since that has basically made the diverse market for wireless consumer electronics possible (including wifi and bluetooth, two of the greatest inventions in consumer electronics in my lifetime).

Macha 5y ago

How do they know where my SSID is? Is my phone sharing that info with them? Did they grab it with Street View cars? Is their advertising now using the SSIDs I pass by to track me even when I explicitly turn off GPS? If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? Do I need to track all them down and find how to opt out of them having a database of my frequent locations?

gruez 5y ago
> How do they know where my SSID is? Is my phone sharing that info with them? Did they grab it with Street View cars? It's crowdsourced from android devices (apple does the same with iOS devices). AFAIK google also grabs it with street view cars. >Is their advertising now using the SSIDs I pass by to track me even when I explicitly turn off GPS? >If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? Yes, but AFAIK on android grabbing SSIDs require the "location" permission for this exact reason. >Do I need to track all them down and find how to opt out of them having a database of my frequent locations? That's on them, not google.
snthd 5y ago
>If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? I don't know. But in countries without strong privacy laws the carrier can sell something similar as triangulated by the cell network. https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-access-to-real-time-location-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-acces...
pelorat 5y ago
> How do they know where my SSID is? Is my phone sharing that info with them? Yes if you have it turned on and you're signed into Google. > Is their advertising now using the SSIDs I pass by to track me even when I explicitly turn off GPS? Turning off GPS stops GPS, not SSID tracking. Modern Android doesn't have a GPS toggle though. It has a "Location" toggle which stops the OS from sending the data to Google. However it does not turn off the location feature in Google Chrome (or other web browsers). > If I turn off location history in Google, does this prevent that information being shared with others in the ad industry chain? Google doesn't share their data with 3rd parties. > Do I need to track all them down and find how to opt out of them having a database of my frequent locations? No.

nullc 5y ago

Because of these databases if I get near you when you're using your computer, I can tell where you live: Your computer will poll for the SSID it's setup to auto-associate to (as they may be hidden). I get the SSID of your home network, and look it up in the database. How creepy is it that these two not very privacy interrupting things -- collecting observed SSID in the wild, and your laptop attempting to connect to things it knows essentially broadcasts your home address when you're at a conference or a coffee shop? Hope you never have a stalker. Worse, google's "opt out" procedure makes your SSID more unique and makes this attack even more effective.

efraim 5y ago
How do you look it up in their database?
- fny 5y ago
  Here's one: https://wigle.net https://wigle.net
  - onionisafruit 5y ago
    I just queried my home ssid on there. I thought it was a pretty unique pun, but 216 other access points have the same ssid. If my phone was probing for it then you could narrow me down quite a bit, but you would need more than that.
    - lazide 5y ago
      If you used the other SSIDs your phone was looking for and cross referenced, I bet confidence could get a lot closer to certain - 99%?
    - modderation 5y ago
      I'd agree that a basic mapping of SSID name to approximate location is a bit useless on its own, but it can be combined with other information to narrow down your physical location. Geographically speaking, how were those SSID's distributed? Were they spread all around the world, across the continent, or were they all in the same city? For example, if your home SSID was known and those 216 SSID's were spread around the world, your home could likely be narrowed down based on some general facts from forum posts. "You spell honor with a U! You often complain about the rain on the forums, and those posts came from that ISP's IP block! According to the public coverage maps for that ISP in that English-speaking country that uses British spellings, your wireless network overlaps with this side of the street, give or take 30m. Let's check it out!" Paranoid fantasy? I truly hope so.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mrighele 5y ago

I think that it is important to consider the reason _why_ we make some information public. We make our SSID public so that we, or our friends, can easily access our WiFi, not so that somebody else use it as a tracking tool. Just because I make something possible, it doesn't mean that somebody else should take advantage of it ("hey, your car was unlocked, so of course I took it for a ride"), even more so when we talk about a huge corporation where the effort of taking advantage of this is much more than the effort that an individual must put to protect him/herself. Want to use my SSID as a location tool ? I'm fine, but first you ask, and the let's talk about how much you're gonna pay for it.

gruez 5y ago
>Want to use my SSID as a location tool ? I'm fine, but first you ask, and the let's talk about how much you're gonna pay for it. Should companies have to ask you to use your house number as a location tool?
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Yeah, curious, it's like when someone calls a taxi and says "Well I'm on Elm Street, I see the house in front of me has the number 73.". That number isn't on display for this person to use, it's more for your friends and mailmen to find your house, but well... I guess the problem is the worldwide database it's put in.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >I guess the problem is the worldwide database it's put in. Why is it a problem to know the gps location of a specific street name + house number? That seems like a pretty useful piece of information, especially in north america where a single street can span the entire width of a city. As for the downsides, what's the privacy implications of knowing that 73 elm street is located at -52.024290244005,101.13123390478796?
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    The scale is exactly the problem. The social contract of what's acceptable for friends, mailmen, or passersby hailing a cab does not apply when extended to automated processes running on computers of global megacorps. I have no issue with a police officer tailing and tracking a suspect with license plate ABC1234. That license plate number is publicly visible information. I do take issue with the police installing license plate cameras that give them a location history of the entire driving population of a city. I have no issue with an acquaintance recognizing me by the shape of my face. If I go out in public, I expect to be publicly visible. I do take issue with Facebook running facial recognition on photos taken by their users, or installing their own facial recognition cameras, and sending advertisements and connection suggestions to me based on my proximity to other people. I have no issue with my neighbor, trying to connect his wifi, seeing my SSID alongside his. The router needs to broadcast a publicly visible management beacon so that he can locate his wireless network and I can locate mine. I do take issue with Google making a global database to allow devices to use the visible SSIDs to determine their location. I have no issue with a web server querying my browser to see what system fonts I have available, or what size my browser window is. These and other bits of information are useful to display the website I'm requesting to me. I do take issue with the server or their advertising partners using these characteristics to construct a fingerprint to track me across sessions or sites. I recognize that there's no empirical difference between these uses. Public information is public, it's not obvious why the source should be able to determine how it's used or where the line is between acceptable, intended, private party use and unacceptable, automated, exploitative use. But I think I know what's acceptable when I see it.

snthd 5y ago

>Google is not distributing any information about an access points. They are - they answer the question "where is the AP with this BSSID?" repeatedly. Not a public api? Just get an ap, change the BSSID and put your android phone in a faraday cage with it. Domestic abuse victim in hiding but still has the old AP/wireless printer? Thanks Google!

anchpop 5y ago
has anything remotely like that happened in the years google has operated this service?

lima 5y ago

> Is there aspect of this that I don't understand? Yes - it's very useful for access points which change location often.

SuchAnonMuchWow 5y ago

Because the number of your house is there for strangers to identify your house. Your SSID is there for you to connect to your private network. The fact that it is broadcasted is a technical limitation, and it is not intended for others beside you. Nobody besides technical people know that the SSID broadcasting can be disabled, and even less know how to use their wifi when it is disabled.

dgl 5y ago
This is the crux of the issue to me, they've now made a privacy opt-out that requires you to broadcast an SSID, in order for their systems to ignore your BSSID. If they don't have an alternative to this opt-out then there's probably a GDPR case right there.

css 5y ago

> If you don't want your SSID broadcasted, turn off the broadcast Hiding the network name doesn't conceal the network from detection or secure it against unauthorized access. It also makes your devices constantly send out that SSID wherever you go when searching for networks. According to Microsoft [0]: > Non-broadcast networks are advertised in the probe requests sent out by wireless clients and in the responses to the probe requests sent by wireless APs. [0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/tn-archive/bb726942(v=technet.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN#why-non-broadcast-networks-are-not-a-security-feature https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/tn-archiv...

doc_gunthrop 5y ago
It's been argued that hiding the network name can make you more of a target because it makes you stand out more than your seemingly more innocuous neighbors. That is unless you never connect any devices to your hidden AP. Like being the only person on the block who blurs out their house on Google Maps or Apple Maps, it could backfire due to the Streisand Effect.

jb775 5y ago

You're missing a major element: the relative measurements of your wifi signal...a.k.a. radar inside your home, visible to people outside your home.[1] Your wireless router sends out a constant signal . That signal bounces off stuff, and can be measured in real time. Once a 3rd party has a calibrated measurement of your wifi signal, they can scan it and make relative measurements in real time. They can reconstruct what's going on in the room by reconstructing the triangulation of how the signal is changing. They've been able to fine-tune it enough to see a person breathing, or see their heart beating. As this technology matures, I believe this will be the next-level of major privacy concerns. [1] https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/ https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/wivi/

myfavoritedog 5y ago
What does that have to do with Google's use of your SSID? If someone wants to use your SSID signal to image what's going on in your house, they don't need to have first gotten your SSID from google's mapping database.

smsm42 5y ago

What is surveillance if not just looking at you? So if you object to the state or private actors being able to track you every movement through the public space, you essentially are advocating for banning people from looking at you when you walk the street. Somehow it doesn't seem the same though. Somehow intuitively it seems different when people just look at you on the street and when some organization compiles a single database where every move of every person is recorded.

Sebb767 5y ago

If I pass by in front of your house, I can see through your windows. If I walk behind you, I can see what you do. Both are somewhat socially acceptable. If I livestream you the whole time and archive the video of everything you do and everything visible in your windows, I bet you'd not feel as comfortable. This is exactly the problem here: Your neighbours or passerbys seeing your SSID is not much of a problem, but a total stranger anywhere in the world finding your address only by (B)SSID is a problem. Especially since these are usually not considered sensitive; you can find quite a few posts showing fun WiFi names or tech support posts were the ID is visible. Hell, maybe some streamers inadvertently show them because they don't know the implication! Combine that with rough information of where the user is from (country should suffice) and you can come knocking on their door. The real problem here is that we usually are very protective of our actual address. These databases make SSIDs equally sensitive data, without people being aware of this.

mankyd 5y ago
> but a total stranger anywhere in the world finding your address only by (B)SSID is a problem. I am not sure I follow. Total strangers can find my address by looking up ... my address. My ssid is probably _less_ associated with my name and other identifying info than my address is, for that matter. Whereas I regularly supply my address to forms when I sign up for things or order packages for delivery, I never really explicitly give out my ssid. A passerby could collect my ssid. They might be able to narrow it down to my building (or maybe the neighbors), but that's not terribly interesting data to strangers trying to "find my address". There are more direct ways to go about that.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > Total strangers can find my address by looking up ... my address. Is there a global open address book with everyone's addresses?
  - foobarbecue 5y ago
    It used to be called White Pages...

sixothree 5y ago

You didn't provide your address in this post. Why not?

sp332 5y ago

It's saying "this is a mobile hotspot so don't use it to orient yourself."

chairmanwow1 5y ago

Yeah. As someone who used to work for a data privacy company, this is really a non-issue IMO.

deleted 5y ago

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