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Can anyone give a technical account of how this is achieved? The article makes it sound as though it relies on unsecured wifi data, but also states that "Even
by siddboots 13y ago
Can anyone give a technical account of how this is achieved?
The article makes it sound as though it relies on unsecured wifi data, but also states that "Even when he didn’t connect to a Wi-Fi network, his sensors could track his location through Wi-Fi “pings.”" It also talks about iMessage, and dropbox, and other application layer data.
I couldn't make sense of it.
- asmithmd1 13y agoiPhones are very "chatty" when not connected to a WiFi access point. They repeatedly try to find access points they have connected to before - broadcasting both their MAC address and the SSID of prior access points. Android phones are completely silent even with the WiFi on when not connected to an access point.
- voltagex_ 13y agoI don't think they'll be silent any more unless you turn off 4.3's "Allow scanning by services" option.
- sangnoir 13y agoThey'll still be silent: "Allow scanning by services" is listen-only with no transmission.
- rickyc091 13y agoYep, this is a good explanation of it. Another thing he mentioned was that even if you have VPN enabled, the first few pings from dropbox, iMessage, etc. actually aren't getting sent through the VPN.
- jonpierce 13y agoPresumably, the location tracking is just a variant of the Wi-Fi-based positioning systems commonly used today. Whereas the system is normally used to provide a device with its location, here it's used to track the device's location. This requires having a network of Wi-Fi access points sharing data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system