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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."
And twice as annoying.
Excuse me while I install this on my son's laptop ... without him knowing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm wearing my tinfoil underwear.
Oh crap, this means I need to wear underwear at the computer.
Why not let it give the user the option of telling the web site some arbitrary location?
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
I sure hope Best Buy still sells that 2-mile long ethernet cable...
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
The addon has to be manually installed.
It's not a piece of malware, it's not surreptitiously installed by remote servers. It's strictly voluntary.
The only privacy concerns which arise from this are if people are not careful enough with the addon to disable it.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Geode is designed to work with websites that rely on knowing your location, such as mapping, geotagging services, and location-based advertising.
Hey, they've got to be making money off of it somehow.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Does this require each hotspot owner to register the location of his/her hotspot, so that a database can be queried to find the location?
e.g. "I can see access points with MAC addresses 00:60:08:57:3C:D2 and 00:E0:18:77:D6:40 so I know I'm at 37 23.516 -122 02.625.."
How many hotspot owners can be bothered to register their correct location? And re-register it if their IP address changes? How many even change their password?
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
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...