Residential Wi-Fi Mapping Database Revealed

Talaria writes "An enormous database of home wifi routers and their locations has been revealed after the Internet Patrol did some digging following AOL's recent announcement of their new "Near Me" service, which allows AIM users to see which of their instant messenger buddies are geographically near them. The database, containing the unique IDs of more than 16 million wireless routers and their locations, has been compiled by AOL partner Skyhook Wireless, which claims to have mapped the majority of residences in the U.S. and Canada."

Comments

How about a photo of your house in a database?

[shalunov]

A truck records signal from your WiFi router? How about people taking a picture of your house to sell to banks and insurance companies? Or aerial close-ups of your backyard?

mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't understand all the hype regarding wireless. Sure, it's convenient for laptops in an airport, cafe, or other public location, but to me it just doesn't make sense for most residences. I think it's main selling point is the fact that people don't have to run wires and people are generally cheap and lazy. But I wired my house myself (16 outlets over 6 rooms) for about $300 in equipment (router, patch panel, 1000' cable, tools, etc) and two days of my time. The setup is fantastic and I don't have to worry about some random jackass piggy-backing my connection. Even if you have a couple of laptops in your house it wouldn't be a problem if you planned an appropriate wiring scheme. Of course if you want to roam around your house and in your yard with your laptop wireless is really the only option, but in my estimation the vast majority of residences consist of exclusively non-portable desktop machines. In that regard wireless is used simply because it is easy and cheap.

Little girls go wiresless; real men run wires.

WiFi Mapping

[drewzhrodague]

I am not surprised by this. In fact, having been the guy that started WiFiMaps.com (In '02), I've been talking about this to others for quite a while now. Positioning yourself using wifi is probably the most useful application for wardriving data. Does it need to be accurate? No, not really. I've talked to scientists working on sub-meter acuracy, and it is very difficult. If you can find out on which part of which block, there are tons and tons and tons of location applets you can think of off the top of your head to make use of that. If there are people interested in a copy of our national (and some other countries) database of wifi locations, ours is GPL'd. What we don't have, is an all-in-one IM applet, which I guess Skyhook and AOL are now trying. Kudos. I sure wish I had some business skills. That can be the difference between the company's product as a topic on slashdot, and a dude at home posting on slashdot with no pants on.