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Groups > comp.mobile.android > #34242
| From | Winston <wbe@UBEBLOCK.psr.com.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.mobile.android, alt.internet.wireless, alt.os.linux |
| Subject | Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet |
| Date | 2016-09-15 01:04 -0400 |
| Organization | Aioe.org NNTP Server |
| Message-ID | <yd7fadg3dt.fsf@UBEblock.psr.com> (permalink) |
| References | <nr84lg$1sfk$1@gioia.aioe.org> <nra5cr$fu0$1@dont-email.me> <nrakc5$q9b$1@news.mixmin.net> |
Cross-posted to 3 groups.
I assume you're referring to things like: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/11/where-have-you-been-your-smartphones-wi-fi-is-telling-everyone/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-google-and-everyone-else-gets-wi-fi-location-data/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/22/google_android_privacy_concerns/ and the like. (I Googled for "Android, cellphone, collecting router SSID, location, privacy" and got those and many other articles.) There's two broad categories: whether there are risks to the person carrying the cellphone and whether there are risks to the people around them operating a wireless router. It looks to me like you are NOT talking about risks to the wireless router owners. You're asking about locating a cellphone owner, so I'll focus on that. There were several ideas floating around a few years ago, as I recall. * In NYC skyscrapers and the like, there are situations where knowing more than just the street address might be useful. If the building has wireless routers, and if their locations are known, then it becomes possible to estimate which floor one is on from which router signals one hears and how strongly. * IIRC (and I might not be), there was talk of whether it would be practical to gradually replace expensive cellphone towers with large numbers of cheap WiFi access points for cellphones (femto access points, I think I've heard them called). Doing so would also help pinpoint the cellphone's location more accurately than is possible with the big cellphone towers, since the range of any particular femto-cell would be small. Cellphones able to switch between cellphone mode and WiFi mode on the fly, or even just use WiFi for data, might also reduce TelCo-metered usage. You speak about getting a location via Google even though you enter a fake signal strength. I don't see how that can work. If you say a signal is really strong, that indicates you're close. If you say the signal is weak, you're further away. Choose any combination of places around the world and make up whatever signal strengths you like, and you probably can get a result anywhere on Earth, even if those numbers are impossible in practice. If I have a wireless router in Google's database, and you submit something that says you hear my router (at all), I would think it'll say you're somewhere near me, even if you aren't. As you enter more numbers, you can triangulate a position, but if you're making up numbers, the answers wouldn't be meaningful. A few specific points: Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> writes: > "if" your cellphone does broadcast an > SSID, then your cellphone *can* be tracked. (B)SSID aside, all cellphones are tracked to the level of "nearest cellphone tower" whenever they're on. If they're within range of more than one tower, the range of possible locations is greatly reduced. > However, even if the router's MAC address could be cloned (it can't, > at least not without desoldering and other heroic actions), Huh? The wireless routers I've configured allow changing of their MAC addresses, often during the initial setup/configuration. (See DD-WRT, ifconfig options wlanbssid #id and wlanaddr #addr (the latter sets the WLAN local MAC address). Regarding some other options, 'man ifconfig' says "Note that this feature does not significantly enhance security as MAC address spoofing is easy to do.") There once was a company that manufactured Ethernet devices that all had the same MAC address. When customers discovered that, they got upset. The manufacturer changed to providing unique addresses (I think). While customers could change the MAC address, they didn't have enough information to ensure the address they chose was unique, as the manufacturers do. OTOH, if you meant cellphone instead of router, I'd mostly agree: cellphone handsets are intended to have unique IDs. However, I'm not sure whether that's the same as the MAC address the cellphone would use to connect to a WiFi hotspot (but maybe it is). Whether it's changeable or not doesn't really matter: once a router has been configured, its MAC addresses are rarely changed (short of replacing the router), so once SSID X has been heard transmitting at location Y, the X,Y pair should be valid for some time. [I can also think of ways to handle the case of duplicate MAC addresses (except when the duplicates are operating so close to each other that one can be in both of their signal areas at the same time).] Fortunately, they're irrelevant to the question of whether Google's database can be used by someone remotely to locate a cellphone user in the absence of actual signal information. I don't see an obvious way to do that. There's also the method of accessing the cellphone's own recorded location history file (see articles), but that doesn't involve Google. Have I completely missed the point? -WBE
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How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-13 06:00 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@invalid.es> - 2016-09-13 15:34 +0200
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-13 16:06 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@invalid.es> - 2016-09-14 00:20 +0200
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-14 04:41 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2016-09-14 00:27 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-14 04:41 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2016-09-14 07:35 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2016-09-14 07:54 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet "Kerr Mudd-John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2016-09-15 11:53 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet pamela <invalid@nospam.com> - 2016-09-17 14:28 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet "Kerr Mudd-John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2016-09-17 21:30 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2016-09-15 08:45 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2016-09-15 08:51 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 19:30 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 18:43 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2016-09-16 20:08 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2016-09-17 09:17 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2016-09-17 17:27 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 02:12 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2016-09-19 15:42 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-19 16:33 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2016-09-19 17:42 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2016-09-19 18:41 +0100
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-20 03:21 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2016-09-16 13:04 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 20:23 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2016-09-15 08:31 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet AL <noemail@none.invalid.com> - 2016-09-15 09:49 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 19:33 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@invalid.es> - 2016-09-19 19:22 +0200
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 19:30 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2016-09-16 13:16 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 04:52 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2016-09-14 00:24 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-14 04:40 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet bruce <bruce@invalid.dyndns.tv.invalid> - 2016-09-14 18:41 -0400
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 19:56 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet bruce <bruce@invalid.dyndns.tv.invalid> - 2016-09-17 16:12 -0400
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Winston <wbe@UBEBLOCK.psr.com.invalid> - 2016-09-17 19:04 -0400
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 03:43 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 02:30 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-17 22:54 -0400
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 03:43 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Winston <wbe@UBEBLOCK.psr.com.invalid> - 2016-09-15 01:04 -0400
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 23:17 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-16 23:36 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 01:59 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 01:59 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> - 2016-09-16 22:22 -0700
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 06:17 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 06:32 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2016-09-17 10:08 -0400
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Peter Köhlmann <peter-koehlmann@t-online.de> - 2016-09-17 16:13 +0200
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 03:43 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 03:49 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-18 04:00 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 01:59 +0000
Re: How to look up the GPS location of your MAC address or car on the Internet Horace Algier <horatio@horatio.net> - 2016-09-17 02:00 +0000
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