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Google Grabbed Locations of Phones, PCs
1800maxim writes "As it turns out, Google didn't only grab the hotspot SSIDs and MAC addresses with its Street View cars. As this article at CNET notes, Google also recorded location data of computers using wireless cards, as well as cell phones and other Wi-Fi devices. Google's explanation is that the data collection was accidental, and they declined to answer further questions from CNET."
Google's business is built on having data about people. Google drives around and collects even more data about people from personal WiFi hotspots, PC WiFi cards, and phones. Only the truly naive can possibly believe this is accidental. The whole "big clumsy cuddly bear stumbling around doing silly things" excuse is getting very old, Google. Stop playing us for stupid.
Actually it's not similar, it's way worse. Apple cached information about the user location on the user's terminal, for performance purposes (although it wasn't stored in the safest way possible). Google grabbed this info from the street, without asking permission, and used that information for business purpose (and not a very fair one, see the Skyhook vs. Google lawsuit). Plus, the notion that a company can collect data “accidentally” is laughable, especially considering the process in which it was acquired.
We've already heard the method they were using for capturing MAC addresses and how sloppy it was. We already knew they were collecting random packets, then truncating them to include the MAC Address and a small portion of the payload and then saving them. We know some of those payloads include packets sent by people GASP on their phones or laptops, therefore it stands to reason some of the MAC addresses must also be from those phones and laptops. We knew this months and months and months ago, but apparently CNET didn't make the connection so easily.
It's like we just keep rehashing the same old story over and over and over because nobody understood it the first time, and someone comes and puts a new spin on old data and suddenly it lives again. The thing is, you can change a registry key and change your MAC address. There's no big table of data somewhere that connects your MAC address to specific person. It's not even remotely the same as an IP address. Oh sure, you can say "Hey the MAC address of this device on my network matches the one on my network yesterday" but not "Hey, that's my neighbors MAC address" unless you've got some sort of access to the device in question.
So Google may know that a certain device was one place and also another place, but that's about the extent of the correlations they can really make with this data. Again, just as before, there's no reason to assume malice when sloppy coding is much more logical explanation. Google has nothing to gain and much to lose (PR-wise) by doing something like this on purpose, and a very reasonable and believable explanation was offered. Conspiracy theorists can continue to beat this dead horse if they like, but I'm an Occam's razor fan.
Why is this new? The StreetView cards were set to promiscuous mode, since they sniffed data packets not intended for them. It stands to reason they recorded responses from the end devices too, not just the AP->device traffic.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
No, they didn't. They just redefined the meaning of 'evil'.
Pray they don't redefine it any further
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Google wants to collect MAC addresses. They do that on purpose. But they don't want mobile MAC addresses. They want FIXED ones, because that's what helps them Geolocate. Again, this all traces back to the same lazy coder who just copy and pasted some packet sniffing code into his project without bothering to change it to be smart enough to only record open wifi routers broadcast packets or to properly truncate the packet down to the MAC address. Instead he just had it take EVERY packet, keep the first 64 bytes, and dump the rest. This resulted in useless mobile MAC addresses also being recorded along with all the payload data that got Google into so much trouble.
They sure seem to be collecting a lot of data by accident...
My friends at Google swear up and down that every line of code in the Google codebase is reviewed several times before it is signed off and released for any purpose. Some would have caught this; it's obvious from the data what is happening. So, either my friends are liars, or Google is. I trust my friends more.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?