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My Location the Next Google Privacy Controversy?

Posted by samzenpus on from the learning-to-trust-the-google dept.

theodp writes "While Google boasts one of its Privacy Principles is making the collection of personal information transparent, even techies are left guessing about what's going on behind the scenes of certain products. The American Dictator points out that Google's Wi-Fi collection efforts don't stop with its Street View cars, offering up this explanation of Google's My Location: 'When you allow Google to "know your location," what you are really agreeing to is to send to Google's computers your Wi-Fi environment — not only the name of the Wi-Fi hotspot you are logged into, but also the names and signal strengths of every Wi-Fi hotspot around you. In other words, the same things that those Google Street View cars were sucking up as they drove by your house.' So, will changes in privacy attitude prompt changes in Latitude?"

10 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Not unusual by Miros · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This method of radio-location is not special or unusual in any way. If anything, it is rather common and not even innovative on google's part. Several firms have exited for _years_ which focus on location based services as determined by nearby hotspots. Also, Latitude is littered with warnings about the nature of the service, and the fact that your location information will be sent back to Google. Of course, this is even less interesting when you consider the fact that your cell phone carrier already knows all of this information all the time and always has, which nobody makes any fuss about whatsoever.

    1. Re:Not unusual by Dishevel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I just want google to tell me that if I move 20 yards SSW I will be able to log onto strong open wifi connection.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    2. Re:Not unusual by Trufagus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, and its a bit scary that we have such misinformation even here on /. where we are supposed to know a lot about things like Wi-Fi and geolocation. How does such a misinformed and misleading topic description get through?

    3. Re:Not unusual by RivenAleem · · Score: 5, Funny

      Careful, that'll put you right onto a motorway, where you'll get hit by a car, and it'll be Google's fault

  2. Holy shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You mean that in order to use a service that uses your Wifi surroundings to determine your location, you have to send the service data about your Wifi surroundings? Holy shit!

    Next, you'll tell me you have to send your private, personal *search terms* to Google to get search results - the horror!

  3. That information is all being broadcast. by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That makes it public. Google is merely asking you to forward some public information to them. You may, if you wish, decline.

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    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
    1. Re:That information is all being broadcast. by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to mention the summary is a troll. What google did wrong with its earlier program was actually capture unencrypted packets. These location services (google is not the only one) simply create a database of wifi names and correlate them to GPS. I don't see the problem here. If you dont want me to write down your hotspot's ssid then I suggest you stop broadcasting it.

    2. Re:That information is all being broadcast. by NevarMore · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not quite. While the SSID's are public information, the signal strength relative to me isn't. That's something you have to be me to know or at least be standing next to me. I hardly call that public information.

      It's broadcast, it's measurable by just about anyone, you don't have to be on private property or in a private building to detect it. I'd say that information is public.

  4. It's astonishing how people don't understand radio by slimjim8094 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    People go to great pains to send a hundred mW throughout the air as far as it'll go, and are surprised when it does just that?

    I'm on a volunteer ambulance squad; being a nerd I made a python script to scrape our crappy eDispatch provider's website for our dispatches and assemble them on a nice website. There was a big fight over password protecting this... despite the fact that we are going to great pains and expense to pump the very same information at about 50W. I ended up throwing a trivial password on it, until everybody forgot.

    Point is, people don't seem to understand the 'broad' part of 'broadcast', and get annoyed that they don't have full control of the signals they emanate past their walls.

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  5. OP is confused... by Manip · · Score: 5, Informative

    The recent privacy controversy was never about Google detecting and recording the names, unique IDs, and signal strength of local WiFi hotspots -- It was about Google mistakenly recording traffic, including unencrypted information that anyone could easily utilise.

    In addition to that, there are only four ways to locate someone connected to the Internet:
      - GeoIP which can perhaps pin you down to a city, perhaps even a town,
      - WiFi triangulation which can pin you down to within a few metres
      - Latency triangulation which is frankly uncompletely unworkable on something as complex as the internet
      - IP->Postal Address Mapping (Read: ISP's database)

    Obviously only two of these are workable for someone like Google and GoeIP is completely inaccurate. No ISP is going to give Google access to their address database.