[AusNOG] Google creepier than Conroy?

[Lincoln Dale]

On 02/06/2010, at 9:59 AM, Jeremy Begg wrote:

> On 02/06/2010, at 9:09 AM, Lincoln Dale wrote:
> 
>> On 02/06/2010, at 8:41 AM, Jeremy Begg wrote:
>>>> http://html5demos.com/geo
>>> 
>>> Hmm.  It doesn't seem to be particularly up-to-date.  I tried it here in my
>>> office and it shows my location as somewhere on King William St, Adelaide
>>> -- approximately the location of an Internode data centre where our Internet
>>> access originated until 10 months ago.
>> 
>> its "accurate" as of when the google street view car last trundled down the road past your SSID + MAC address of your 802.11 AP.
> 
> Not sure how tongue-in-cheek that comment's meant to be!

not tongue-in-cheek at all.  that is the source data for the vast majority of geolocation today.

where google recently got in trouble was that seemingly their streetview cars actually sniffed data rather than just recording SSID+MAC, i.e. they seemingly recorded everything they saw.

given the vast quantity of compute power they have, i'm surprised there hasn't been more of an uproar.


> 
> I can see how that might be the case for some sites, but it doesn't explain us.
> 

its not only using _your_ AP SSID+MAC address but in fact all AP SSIDs+MAC address(es) that have are visible.

since by default HTML5 is using 'Google Location Services', it is entirely possible it also uses whatever voodoo mechanisms google has cooked up to figure out where you are.  likely that gets hints based on the DNS query your host/browser would be doing too, although marrying up caching DNS hierarchy is prone to error.

it is trivial for you to see what data it 'sends' for geolocation.  if you are using firefox suggest you use an add-on like "Live HTTP headers" and then go to an example page like http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/

you'll find that on a web browser it will post geolocation data using "wifi_towers" array of MAC + signel-strength and attempt to triangulate using that.
if you are using e.g. 3G then it will do the same using "cell_towers" and cell tower id's + signal-strength + timing data.
if you are using a device with a GPS built in, HTML5 will also post lat+long in the request too.

all data for the API is at http://code.google.com/apis/gears/geolocation_network_protocol.html


> Our Internet connection was provided by a PAPL link to Internode's data centre;
> our WiFi a/p is in our office (and hasn't moved).

thankfully its not perfect.  in fact, for me it thinks i'm in the Bay area of California.  i am not.  perfect.



cheers,

lincoln.