[LINK] mobile 802.11 - the parole bracelet for the man in the street

[Alex (Maxious) Sadleir]

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 4:09 AM, Jon Seymour <jon.seymour at gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought I'd write up some discoveries I made recently about the
> pervasiveness of 802.11-based location fixing.
>
> The discoveries certainly opened my eyes. I guess I had always known
> that 802.11 networks _could_ be used for location fixing purposes, but
> I hadn't realised how extensively they _are_ being used for this
> purpose. I was surprised at how pervasive the infrastructure is and
> how trivial it is for a non-privileged person to interrogate it.
There's also an issue in some customer based equipment when they allow
remote access (directly or through a proxying vulnerability) to the
most basic of status information because now you can tie an IP address
(or a visitor to your website) to a wireless MAC address to a street
address: http://www.devttys0.com/2010/12/dd-wrt-i-know-where-you-live/

>
> I also wonder about how this reality is going to mesh with the
> emerging reality of people such as myself carrying portable Wifi
> access points (such as the Vodafone Pocket Wifi device) in our
> pockets.
A wireless device where you change the MAC address routinely should
protect you from this. I have to admit I thought the data was months
out of date, not just a week so perhaps you'd have to change the
address daily in urban areas like Sydney. Google could even use the
mesh of Android devices to update their wifi location database the
same way they get traffic information from mobile devices with Google
Maps for Mobile then there would probably be no hope of privacy ;)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html