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Firefox Add-On To Track Your Location Via Wi-Fi
Barence writes "Mozilla Labs has unveiled a new Add-on that allows Firefox to pinpoint your location based on Wi-Fi signals. The feature, called Geode, is a prototype for the location-tracking technology that will be built into the forthcoming Firefox 3.1. Geode is designed to work with websites that rely on knowing your location, such as mapping and geotagging services. The prospect of Firefox having the ability to track your location raises obvious privacy fears. Mozilla insists users will remain in complete control. 'With Geode, when a website requests your location a notification bar will ask how much information you want to give that site: your exact location, your neighbourhood, your city, or nothing at all,' the Mozilla Labs blog claims."
Is this IP address driven? Is this mostly for public hotspots? Will one be able to register their home Wifi signal?
Will one be able to register their neighbors unsecured wifi signal?
Will there be reverse look uo p for public hotspots? How about "Public" hotspots?
Eschew Obfuscation
If a service can offer a better experience if it knows my location without having to login and identify myself, it is useful in many scenarios. For example, advertising a deal or a offering a coupon for an item in a nearby store. But like any technology, it can definitely be abused.
There are a few problems with WiFi based location estimation. For example, the SSID may change or vanish. Secondly, it can easily be abused by reporting false location. On the contrary, it can work indoors unlike most commercial GPS'es.
This technology gained attention with the Place Lab (http://www.placelab.org/) initiative.
IP geolocation usually only gets you down to the city level usually and even then the city you get isn't always accurate. Using wifi signals (I assume they keep a keep a database of SSIDs and AP MAC addresses to compare against) should be able to get your location down to at least the city block level which is much more useful.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
there is the danger, when providing this capacity, for websites to begin to demand it
There is also the source code, freely available and modifiable, which means you could easily tell such websites that your current location is Fuckoff, in the fine state of NoneOfYourDamnedBusiness.
a number of sites don't work at all unless I tell NoScript to allow JS on them.
Hey, it could always be worse. You could always stumble on a site that doesn't work unless you allow Flash on it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It could be updated by the users of firefox, assuming the world didnt move to the west 20meters you should be able to figure out a few routers moving at a time. Sounds like a really fun/interesting code challenge.
Just being included would make it open to security problems. Someday a vulnerability might let a sight activate it using JavaScript, for example.
I'm a minimalist. If I'm not going to ever use it, I'd rather it not be on the computer at all, especially if it's a potential privacy issue.
And we all know that your average Firefox user will always be going to mozilla for their builds. I doubt a fork that removes this component would gain much traction.
Developers: We can use your help.
From the included LICENSE.TXT:
"The XPCom component contained within the contents of this extension is licensed by
Skyhook Wireless, Inc. ("Skyhook") and are subject to the Skyhook license and
terms of use (the "Skyhook License"); you may not use this component except
in compliance with the Skyhook License.
You may obtain a copy of the Skyhook License at [need URL]"
I didn't look long, but I could not find any "Skyhook License" on Skyhook's website (which is I guess why they chose not to fill in the URL!). I certainly would not use a product for which the license was in question like this, especially considering the proprietary, binary-only DLLs they provide. Not that I would be able to try it out, since it only includes 32-bit Windows and Mac libraries, no Linux at all.
Buyer beware, as they say...
Every day at midnight, the geode add on wakes your laptop and sends a very quick communication to a database online. The database is simple. Geode identifier and a y/n column for has your computer been stolen? If a user has reported his laptop stolen the connection stays on and local authorities are notified.
And this has been another installament of Captain Obvious!
And thus marks the end my my upgrade path with Firefox. It's been nice, so long and thanks for all the fish!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
"The prospect of Firefox having the ability to track your location raises obvious privacy fears."
What I fear more is Firefox becoming everything but what people need it to be. You know, a web browser.
Please wake me up when someone decides to fork FF and remove all the useless crap that's being added lately. We're far from what made many of us tech-savvy people switch to what used to be a lightweight, efficient and secure web browser.
____
nico
Nico-Live