3 ms·
Simply being connected to mobile (or wifi) network is enough to get your location - sometimes with pretty good precision. So if you're worried about NSA or the
by techcode 2y ago
Simply being connected to mobile (or wifi) network is enough to get your location - sometimes with pretty good precision.
So if you're worried about NSA or the like - you better not have a mobile phone/device (or a car - because new cars sold in EU all have eSIM for builtin emergency calls) at all.
And for particular first hand example - Xplora smart watch/phone got super confused when my kids school physically moved.
New building has indoor sports/gym (I think it's basketball court size) on the top floor - and all the reinforced concrete means mobile reception can be hit and miss (even on 3/4G).
Despite phone/watch never connecting to school (staff only) wifi. After move to new building - watch and parent app would regularly think/bounce location between old and new school buildings.
When even 3rd party companies have a mapping between wifi/ssid and approximate geo location, you can imagine state sponsored actors have at least next order of magnitude.
- lxgr 2y agoProbably the school moved all of their Wi-Fi access points with it? These are often used for indoor positioning, even without any device connecting to them.
- crtasm 2y agoThere's public databases of SSID geolocation, e.g. https://wigle.net/ https://wigle.net/
- storyinmemo 2y agoIf your wifi client device can't find an access point, it goes around emitting every saved wifi network you've got. You can learn an awful lot from that.
- kioleanu 2y agoWe had the same experience with the Xplora watches: we moved 6km away and took the internet contract with us. Whenever the watch was inside the house, it would show it as being at the old address. Outside of he house and away from wifi, it showed the location correctly. I imagine this is an edge case