Google To Honor "Don't-Track-Me-Bro" Requests

theodp writes "Someday soon, Google will allow owners of Wi-Fi access points to opt out of a Google service that uses their data to determine the location of others' smartphones. The opt-out service will be available globally, although it was created at the instigation of European privacy regulators, Google Global Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer explained in a blog post."

Comments

Opting out of Geolocation

[billstewart]

The service Google is talking about here tracks the physical location of Wifi hubs by SSID, and because of regulatory pressure they're letting the Wifi hub users opt out. But how are they going to do that? Let anybody fill out a web form saying "SSID '12345678' is mine" and opt out? (Or at least implement some minimal security by requiring you to also provide the street address, so they can validate that you know where that SSID is, though you could still forge an opt-out for your local Starbucks?)

One thing they don't talk about is whether they're tracking anything by IP address, or just by SSID. I'd really like to tell them not to track anything from my Wifi Access Point's IP address :-)

Meanwhile, I'm the owner of "linksys" - please opt me out!

Re:Opting out of Geolocation

[AmiMoJo]

If Street View is anything to go by there wont be any security. You can get anything removed from Street View just by claiming you live somewhere in the image and supplying an email address. The place I used to work at removed all their competitors' shops that way.

Re:Opting out of Geolocation

[Cyberllama]

You would think that, and you'd be sort of right. But this is basically a retroactive opt-out. Say your SSID was public and now you want it out of their database. I honestly cannot imagine why. There are literally 0 privacy implications here. It's pretty clear this was done just to shut up some European regulator who had no idea what the hell Google was actually doing but thought it *sounded* like something he should be concerned about.

Also, I think its not about SSID but rather MAC address of the router broadcasting an SSID. So if you changed your SSID, you wouldn't confuse the geolocation service, but if you stopped broadcasting your SSID and went stealth it should still serve as an opt-out.

I just hate..

[Reverand Dave]

..that this has to happen at the behest of a government agency. Why didn't google just foresee this was going to happen and implement it originally?

Re:I just hate..

[0123456]

Don't talk crap. Mobile location can be extremely useful. You go to google, search for something, like skateboard, or restaurant, and you'll get the nearest offerings come up, on a map, with the option to navigate from your current location.

What if I'm not looking for the nearest location?

And what do I do when Google's idea of my location is not even in the same country, let alone the same town? When I was in Italy a couple of years ago Google was convinced that I was in Holland. Of course having the website come up in Dutch wasn't much worse than having it come up in Italian because I don't speak either language, so the 'user-friendly' location tracking was actively harmful either way.

Re:I just hate..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

..that this has to happen at the behest of a government agency. Why didn't google just foresee this was going to happen and implement it originally?

Because nothing else involving public broadcasts of personal information works this way in the USA. For example, I'd like to opt out of ANPR - automatic license plate reading systems but I don't have that option short of not using my car (same as not using wifi).

Re:I just hate..

[Cyberllama]

Because its hysterical nonsense. There's no privacy issue here whatsoever. Even the summary calls it "tracking", which just shows the submitter has no idea whats going on here. It's not tracking. All their doing is paying attention to their location when a router announces its presence. So theoretically, somebody might be able to figure out if your address has a wifi router or not. Is that a privacy issue for you?

Because if so, you can turn that announcement off and stay "private". You don't actually need to "opt-out". I cannot imagine *why* you would need to keep the fact that you have a Wifi router a secret. Are you an Amish person afraid of being ostracized? Regardless, that is the only privacy issue at stake here and it hardly qualifies as tracking.

Google is only doing this to shut up some bag of hot air at some regulatory agency who clearly doesn't understand technology and assumes that there must be some greater privacy significance to creating this sort of database but there simply isn't. Router MAC addresses cannot be backtracked to people's names, and even if they could all you'd know is who has wifi in their house and who doesn't. Oooooooh, scary!

Shouldn't they ask us to OPT IN?

[mrnick]

It's our service shouldn't we be opting in rather than out? Opting out would somehow imply that it is their right to do this? Didn't they get in trouble once already for scraping people's wifi for their own gain?

Re:Shouldn't they ask us to OPT IN?

[icebraining]

One could say you opted in by broadcasting your SSID and BSSID to the public street.

Re:Shouldn't they ask us to OPT IN?

[JabberWokky]

You're broadcasting. Your choice. How do I opt out of your router grabbing a channel and filling my airwaves?

Re:Shouldn't they ask us to OPT IN?

[The Raven]

Imagine if you had a giant neon sign on top of your roof with your SSID on it, available for everyone within a quarter mile to see... and you got pissed when someone started keep track of the location of all of those neon signs. Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't make something public if you want it to be private.

The WiFi spec doesn't require broadcasting your SSID. If you want it to be private, don't shout it out; stop shouting your SSID to the world, and disable SSID broadcast in your router settings.

Re:"Bro"

[AliasMarlowe]

wtf @ title

I take it the word "Bro" has you confused. It's quite simple, Google will not track members of the 1st Infantry Division (United_States) or members of the Border Roads Organization, especially if said members are wearing a male bra while in a particular town in Sweden. Is it clear enough now?

How does one opt-out

[Stan92057]

How does one opt-out of something they have no idea they belong too? And didnt Google say the data they collected was by accident?

Re:How does one opt-out

[Nerdfest]

They intentionally grabbed the SSID and MAC addresses. They inadvertently grabbed non-encrypted data in the same packets (the default setting in the open-source software package they used).

Re:About time.

[icebraining]

you can opt not to be tracked

No, you can opt out of helping others be tracked with your AP. Whether you are tracked or not is a completely different issue.

Personally, I'd prefer if people did not opt out, because people can already opt out of the tracking on their own cellphones*, and opting out of this is bad for anyone who is voluntarily trying to get their location.

* tracking by the providers is impossible to disable on the cellphone, but this won't help with that either.