{"id":1928,"date":"2010-08-12T13:08:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T13:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1928"},"modified":"2010-08-12T14:44:13","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T14:44:13","slug":"yikes-my-computer-can-tell-websites-where-i-live-thanks-to-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/08\/yikes-my-computer-can-tell-websites-where-i-live-thanks-to-google.htm","title":{"rendered":"Yikes! My computer can tell websites where I live (thanks to Google)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago there was a furor as angry Facebook users rallied against the social networking site&#8217;s approach to sharing our personal data.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people even closed their accounts but at least Facebook&#8217;s users choose the information that they post on the site.\u00c2\u00a0 OK, so I guess someone else may tag me in an image, but it&#8217;s basically up to me to decide whether I want something to be made available &#8211; and I can always use fake information if I choose to (I don&#8217;t &#8211; information like my date of birth, place of birth, and my Mother&#8217;s maiden name is all publicly available from government sources, so why bother to hide it?).<\/p>\n<p>Over the last couple of weeks though, I&#8217;ve been hearing about Google being able to geolocate a device based on information that their Streetview cars collected.\u00c2\u00a0 Not <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/technology\/2010\/may\/21\/google-street-view-uk-data\">the Wi-Fi traffic that was collected &#8220;by mistake&#8221;<\/a> but information collected about Wi-Fi networks in a given neighbourhood used to create a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/privacy-lsf.html\">geolocation database<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I don&#8217;t really mind that Google has a picture of my house on Streetview&#8230; although we were having building work done at the time, so the presence of a builder&#8217;s skip on my drive does drag down the impression of my area a little!\u00c2\u00a0 What I was shocked to find was that <a href=\"http:\/\/davidwalsh.name\/geolocation-api\">Firefox users can access this database to find out quite a lot about the location of my network<\/a> (indeed, <a href=\"http:\/\/diveintohtml5.org\/geolocation.html\">any browser that supports the Geolocation API can<\/a>) &#8211; in my case it&#8217;s only accurate to within about 30-50 metres, but that&#8217;s pretty close! I didn&#8217;t give consent for Google to collect this &#8211; in effect they have been &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wardriving\">wardriving<\/a>&#8221; the streets of Britain (and elsewhere).\u00c2\u00a0 And if you&#8217;re thinking &#8220;thats OK, my Wi-Fi is locked down&#8221; well, so is mine &#8211; I use WPA2 and only allow certain MAC addresses to connect but the very existence of the Wi-Fi access point provides some basic information to clients.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst I&#8217;m not entirely happy that Google has collected this information, it&#8217;s been done now, and being able to geolocate myself could be handy &#8211; particularly as PCs generally don&#8217;t have GPS hardware and location-based services will become increasingly prevalent over the coming years.\u00c2\u00a0 In addition, <a href=\"http:\/\/hacks.mozilla.org\/2009\/06\/geolocation\/\">Firefox asks for my consent before returning the information required for the database lookup<\/a> (that&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/geolocation-API\/#security\">a requirement of the W3C&#8217;s Geolocation API<\/a>)\u00c2\u00a0 and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.howtogeek.com\/howto\/1672\/deactivate-location-aware-browsing-in-firefox-3.5\/\">it&#8217;s possible to turn geolocation off in Firefox<\/a> (presumably it&#8217;s as simple in other browsers too).<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s a little worrying is that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.securityweek.com\/hacker-uses-xss-and-google-streetview-data-determine-physical-location\">a malicious website can grab the MAC address of a user&#8217;s router<\/a>, after which it&#8217;s just a simple API call to find out where the user is (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinq.co.uk\/2010\/8\/4\/hacker-uses-street-view-find-where-you-live\/\">as demonstrated at the recent Black Hat conference<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 The privacy and security implications of this are quite alarming!<\/p>\n<p>One thing&#8217;s for sure: Internet privacy is an oxymoron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few months ago there was a furor as angry Facebook users rallied against the social networking site&#8217;s approach to sharing our personal data.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people even closed their accounts but at least Facebook&#8217;s users choose the information that they post on the site.\u00c2\u00a0 OK, so I guess someone else may tag me in an &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/08\/yikes-my-computer-can-tell-websites-where-i-live-thanks-to-google.htm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Yikes! My computer can tell websites where I live (thanks to Google)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[79,43,70],"class_list":["post-1928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-google","tag-security","tag-web-browsers"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Yikes! My computer can tell websites where I live (thanks to Google) - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/08\/yikes-my-computer-can-tell-websites-where-i-live-thanks-to-google.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yikes! 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The nearly-10 year-old\u00a0just wants a reasonably-priced, reasonably-specced tablet as my original iPad is no longer suiting his needs (stuck back on iOS 5 and with a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":510,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2004\/09\/enhanced-search-capabiliti_109784420367849208.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1928,"position":1},"title":"Enhanced search capabilities for Outlook and the Desktop","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Tuesday 28 September 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The fact that Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google are all looking to grow (or retain) their share of the search market and to extend this to the desktop is no secret. 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Another feature (which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Google\"","block_context":{"text":"Google","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/google"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4177,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/07\/the-annotated-world-the-future-of-geospatial-technology-edparsons-at-digitalsurrey.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1928,"position":3},"title":"The annotated world &#8211; the future of geospatial technology? (@EdParsons at #DigitalSurrey)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 27 July 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Tonight's Digital Surrey was, as usual, a huge success with a great speaker (Google's @EdParsons) in a fantastic venue (Farnham Castle). \u00a0Ed spoke about the future of geospatial data - about annotating our world to enhance the value that we can bring from mapping tools today but, before he spoke\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/9c6W4CCU9M4\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":451,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2005\/04\/new-services-from-google.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1928,"position":4},"title":"New services from Google","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Wednesday 20 April 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night, I read on Owen's blog that Google has launched its mapping service in the UK (it's been available in the US for some time), although in true Google style, Google Maps (UK) is still labelled as a beta service. Also launched with UK content are Google Local (UK)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Google\"","block_context":{"text":"Google","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/google"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1337,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/02\/a-real-use-for-google-maps-street-view.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1928,"position":5},"title":"A real use for Google Maps Street View","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Monday 9 February 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"If all has gone to plan, by the time you read this, I'll just have returned from a romantic weekend in Paris with Mrs. W. In itself, that's not particularly relevant to a technology blog but, whilst booking the hotel for the weekend, I found Google Maps incredibly useful. Not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Google\"","block_context":{"text":"Google","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/google"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1969,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions\/1969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}