Google is a rival to Apple. A trojan horse should not surprise anyone. Google no longer pushes there mail service to the iOS mail app on our i-devices. Funny as these things have been done before. How many of you know that we can thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for the second coming of Steve Jobs to Apple?
There was a time when Netscape and Microsoft were in a war for web browser dominance. At that time Microsoft made internet explorer for the Mac. Little did many know that internet explorer was the cause of the crashing of the Apple OS. With Apple's OS being trashed they needed a new OS and that is when they purchased Next and Jobs came back to Apple. And as they, the rest is history.
If you are concerned with Google, check out some of the nice new apps from Yahoo!.
Google is a rival to Apple. A trojan horse should not surprise anyone. Google no longer pushes there mail service to the iOS mail app on our i-devices. Funny as these things have been done before. How many of you know that we can thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for the second coming of Steve Jobs to Apple?
There was a time when Netscape and Microsoft were in a war for web browser dominance. At that time Microsoft made internet explorer for the Mac. Little did many know that internet explorer was the cause of the crashing of the Apple OS. With Apple's OS being trashed they needed a new OS and that is when they purchased Next and Jobs came back to Apple. And as they, the rest is history.
If you are concerned with Google, check out some of the nice new apps from Yahoo!.
What the heck are you talking about? Google regularly pushes my gmail to my iOS mail app, so maybe it just hates you personally?
What the heck are you talking about? Google regularly pushes my gmail to my iOS mail app, so maybe it just hates you personally?
1) Learn the difference between push and pull.
2) Back in December Google announced that the Microsoft Exchange support offered with Google Sync would be removed. That support ended January 30, 2013. For those who are using the Gmail push notification feature on existing hardware, there's no cause for concern as Google has grandfathered in your accounts. However, when you get a new iOS device through an upgrade or replacement, you'll find that you can no longer receive instant push notifications for Gmail accounts.
I think the people guessing that Google is reporting your whereabouts and sending data on your phone back to the hive are more likely correct. Eventually they'll tell us it was inadvertent, then we'll find out everything they've said publicly was, as usual, a brazen lie.
Who said they're not sending up info? I would think that of course they're sending up your location, in order to generate specific cards because of your calendar, location, traffic, pending packages, etc.
Anticipating your needs, based partly on your location, is the whole point of the app.
D'oh!
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
An obvious question: does this mean that if you have this on a WiFi only device (an iPad, say), than this functionality is not available? Every time I turn off Wifi (on my LTE device) iOS chides me that this will make location services less accurate, so is there some other hack for WiFi, or you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
I was guessing that if cell was not available, the significant change API switched to WiFi ... but as I said, that was just a guess. Rereading the docs, however...
"In iOS 4.0 and later, you can use the significant-change location service to receive location events. This service offers a significant power savings and provides accuracy that is good enough for most apps. It uses the device’s cellular radio ..."
Makes it sound like a Wi-Fi only device will have to use another location API, like the one for boundaries, which would definitely use more CPU power.
An obvious question: does this mean that if you have this on a WiFi only device (an iPad, say), than this functionality is not available? Every time I turn off Wifi (on my LTE device) iOS chides me that this will make location services less accurate, so is there some other hack for WiFi, or you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
FWIW Google Now works just fine on a WiFi only Nexus 7. I'd be fairly surprised if it won't do as well on WiFi only iPads.
When Google got caught hacking all those WiFi sets while doing Street View, they didn't have to give back the data afterwards, so yeah, they know the whereabouts of every WiFi on the planet.
What the heck are you talking about? Google regularly pushes my gmail to my iOS mail app, so maybe it just hates you personally?
It is something new. My iPhone and iPad are fine but when my wife restored her iPad, the google exchange stopped pushing. It is a known issue and she is now looking for a new host for our family emails. You are like me, a heritage user till you restore or upgrade.
When Google got caught hacking all those WiFi sets while doing Street View, they didn't have to give back the data afterwards, so yeah, they know the whereabouts of every WiFi on the planet.
Hacking WiFi sets?? Registering WiFi network names and locations isn't against the law anymore than noting the color of your car or the name on your mailbox if I drive by.
When Google got caught hacking all those WiFi sets while doing Street View, they didn't have to give back the data afterwards, so yeah, they know the whereabouts of every WiFi on the planet.
Did they really hack anything or simply record WiFi data that was freely being sent?
Probably Google had to pay more for their license of MS ActiveSync.
(Some might remember that Google wrote Congress last year, suggesting that de facto standards should have the same rate protection as FRAND patents. Ignorant sites reported this as a grab for Apple patents, but it had nothing to do with Apple. It was only about single-company patents that were sold to everyone as a standard... patents like ActiveSync in particular... then later relicensed to holding companies so old contracts were nullified and the price could go up.)
Hacking WiFi sets?? Registering WiFi network names and locations isn't against the law anymore than noting the color of your car or the name on your mailbox if I drive by.
The name of the WiFi is not important, it is the Mac address and IP they want. I can change the name anytime I want. I cannot change the Mac address. That info is not being broadcast. They have to hack it to get it. Public WiFi is another situation altogether. If all they wanted was the name then 100 million of them are going to be Linksys or Netgear.
The name of the WiFi is not important, it is the Mac address and IP they want. I can change the name anytime I want. I cannot change the Mac address. That info is not being broadcast. They have to hack it to get it.
Source and destination layer 2 addresses are most certainly part of all wireless communication. How would the devices know which data is for them or which isn't if they didn't have addresses in the packet header?
Source and destination layer 2 addresses are most certainly part of all wireless communication. How would the devices know which data is for them or which isn't if they didn't have addresses in the packet header?
I suppose that is right. Perhaps hacking was not the correct term use but the IP address that is exposed is the DHCP one, no? Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
It absolutely drains the battery. Both my iPhone (with normal use) and my iPad (with zero use) lost battery power much faster than before it was updated. I turned it off and all is back to normal.
I suppose that is right. Perhaps hacking was not the correct term use but the IP address that is exposed is the DHCP one, no? Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
That depends on your use o the word private.
If you have a hidden SSID, the human readable name for your WiFI network, you aren't really hiding it as this can still be sent in packets. All you're doing is keeping it from showing up in a list of available networks.
If you only allow certain MAC addresses to access your network anyone can still intercept those packets. In fact, each device will still receive these packets if they are in range but the router will simply ignore them if they are not part of the approved list of MAC addresses, just as all other devices simply discard anything not from your router's address to your device's address.
This means you need to encrypt your data over your network, something that simply doesn't happen on public networks. But remember that the data is still be sent out in all directions and recorded by all devices with the appropriate frequency and band, it's just that it can't read the packet data because its encrypted, but the header and footer are still readable, which is how these devices know which items are for them and if its been damaged.
I don't know of any cracks that can break WPA2, which is what everyone should be using. WPA is less secure and WEP is very easy to break. I would doubt that Google would take the time to hack any of the encrypted packets they come across. Even the easily hackable WEP requires that you retrieve enough data to figure out the passcode which I think is unlikely with a car driving by.
Speaking of Google, it's always been a head scratcher to me that Google doesn't offer a free VPN service so users can protect all their data on public WiFi, or even when using a work computer were you want extra protection. The benefit for Google is they can not only see what you search for, but also the sites you go to. I may not trust Google too much but I certainly trust them more than the average person sitting in a coffee shop (or in van in the parking lot) that could use any number of free apps to grab user data.
PS: If AI offered a paid subscription that offered SSL I would jump on that.
Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
Google's gathering hotspot location info with their Street View cars was fine.
Heck, anyone can collect hotspot MAC addresses. Many groups have done it. Early public domain hotspot positioning projects gathered donated info. Skyhook used that info, plus drove around to get their own hotspot database that the iPhone used at first in place of GPS.
In fact, iOS devices gather hotspot info every time they ask for a location, or you turn on your phone, or you make a call... and send it up to Apple (since they now use their own database instead of Skyhook's).
--
What Europe complained about was that the code that Google used to collect hotspot location info, also inadvertently stored a file with anything the code could hear during the few seconds the car was driving past an in-use, non-encrypted hotspot.
Several notes about that:
1) It wasn't done on purpose. The locating code was originally written by a famous Silicon Valley wardriver, and still had his info-gathering library in it... and no later developer had noticed before it was deployed to the Street View cars.
2) Google voluntarily divulged its existence. They didn't have to, they could've just deleted it, but they had nothing to hide. They never used the info even after discovering it. (It would be pretty useless, if you think about it. Most seconds-long comms would probably be web pages etc with nothing personal. Passwords would've gone over SSL and not be seen.)
3) In the US, it's legal to intercept any communications that are freely available to the public... and a non-secure WiFi hotspot counts as freely available, since you're sending signals off your property. (It can be illegal to USE the hotspot, but it's legal to LISTEN to it.)
In short, it was a European hullabaloo over a trumped up privacy issue. But it made great political headlines.
Google's gathering hotspot location info with their Street View cars was fine.
Heck, anyone can collect hotspot MAC addresses. Many groups have done it. Early public domain hotspot positioning projects gathered donated info. Skyhook used that info, plus drove around to get their own hotspot database that the iPhone used at first in place of GPS.
In fact, iOS devices gather hotspot info every time they ask for a location, or you turn on your phone, or you make a call... and send it up to Apple (since they now use their own database instead of Skyhook's).
--
What Europe complained about was that the code that Google used to collect hotspot location info, also inadvertently stored a file with anything the code could hear during the few seconds the car was driving past an in-use, non-encrypted hotspot.
Several notes about that:
1) It wasn't done on purpose. The locating code was originally written by a famous Silicon Valley wardriver, and still had his info-gathering library in it... and no later developer had noticed before it was deployed to the Street View cars.
2) Google voluntarily divulged its existence. They didn't have to, they could've just deleted it, but they had nothing to hide. They never used the info even after discovering it. (It would be pretty useless, if you think about it. Most seconds-long comms would probably be web pages etc with nothing personal. Passwords would've gone over SSL and not be seen.)
3) In the US, it's legal to intercept any communications that are freely available to the public... and a non-secure WiFi hotspot counts as freely available, since you're sending signals off your property. (It can be illegal to USE the hotspot, but it's legal to LISTEN to it.)
In short, it was a European hullabaloo over a trumped up privacy issue. But it made great political headlines.
Sorry, but your point of view is pretty biased to say the least.
From what I noticed the analogy drawn by the european legislation was an open front-door of a house (=private place).
Keeping the door open is negligent and therefore there's no base for huge damage claims, but nevertheless nobody is entitled to enter the house and take something along.
The discussion was whether it's prohibited by european privacy law to copy or use private data accidentally or negligently unprotected.
Depending on your point of view this issue might seem overblown, but hullabaloo is definitely the wrong word to describe this ongoing privacy discussion.
Google didn't have the approval of the data owners to sniff the private data.
Using publicly broadcasted parameters like the MAC address or the router location is fine, the network traffic is not, because they weren't the intended recipient.
Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
Google's gathering hotspot location info with their Street View cars was fine.
Yes and soliciting door to door or hanging advertising on residential doors is fine as well, so long as you have a permit. Google needs city, county, or state permits to go through the neighborhoods taking pictures and for doing low altitude flyover photography. If Google went to my city government and asked for a permit to do Street View they would need to explain the purpose of the project. I'd be willing to bet there was no mention of ...Oh by the way, while we are collecting imagery we are also going to be probing resident's home networks to glean whatever we can snag. No, I don't think they would mention that part in the permit application because it would never be approved, at least not by our city government.
Depending on your point of view this issue might seem overblown, but hullabaloo is definitely the wrong word to describe this ongoing privacy discussion.
Google didn't have the approval of the data owners to sniff the private data.
Using publicly broadcasted parameters like the MAC address or the router location is fine, the network traffic is not, because they weren't the intended recipient.
Google did not use any of that data, or even know it existed at first, and the EU officials understood all that. So it could've been an easy case of, okay, delete the data and be more careful next time. Itself, it was drawn out for political purposes only. They even made Google keep the data as evidence for a while, which seems like a pretty bad privacy idea.
That said, using "overblown" in place of "hullabaloo" is fine with me Sometimes when I'm writing in a hurry while working, I can't think of a non-offensive word. Cheers!
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Google needs city, county, or state permits to go through the neighborhoods taking pictures and for doing low altitude flyover photography.
I'm not aware of any driving permits needed in the USA, although anything is possible. Got an example?
As for aerial photography... umm, that's Bing or Apple, not Google. And the plane should stay above minimum safe altitude (MSA) and not need a permit AFAIK. (MSA is 500' in the boondocks, and 1000' in populated areas.)
Quote:
If Google went to my city government and asked for a permit to do Street View they would need to explain the purpose of the project. I'd be willing to bet there was no mention of ...Oh by the way, while we are collecting imagery we are also going to be probing resident's home networks to glean whatever we can snag. No, I don't think they would mention that part in the permit application because it would never be approved, at least not by our city government.
A city cannot prevent someone from intercepting WiFi MAC addresses. The FCC takes priority.
Comments
Google is a rival to Apple. A trojan horse should not surprise anyone. Google no longer pushes there mail service to the iOS mail app on our i-devices. Funny as these things have been done before. How many of you know that we can thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for the second coming of Steve Jobs to Apple?
There was a time when Netscape and Microsoft were in a war for web browser dominance. At that time Microsoft made internet explorer for the Mac. Little did many know that internet explorer was the cause of the crashing of the Apple OS. With Apple's OS being trashed they needed a new OS and that is when they purchased Next and Jobs came back to Apple. And as they, the rest is history.
If you are concerned with Google, check out some of the nice new apps from Yahoo!.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdavy
Google is a rival to Apple. A trojan horse should not surprise anyone. Google no longer pushes there mail service to the iOS mail app on our i-devices. Funny as these things have been done before. How many of you know that we can thank Bill Gates and Microsoft for the second coming of Steve Jobs to Apple?
There was a time when Netscape and Microsoft were in a war for web browser dominance. At that time Microsoft made internet explorer for the Mac. Little did many know that internet explorer was the cause of the crashing of the Apple OS. With Apple's OS being trashed they needed a new OS and that is when they purchased Next and Jobs came back to Apple. And as they, the rest is history.
If you are concerned with Google, check out some of the nice new apps from Yahoo!.
What the heck are you talking about? Google regularly pushes my gmail to my iOS mail app, so maybe it just hates you personally?
1) Learn the difference between push and pull.
2) Back in December Google announced that the Microsoft Exchange support offered with Google Sync would be removed. That support ended January 30, 2013. For those who are using the Gmail push notification feature on existing hardware, there's no cause for concern as Google has grandfathered in your accounts. However, when you get a new iOS device through an upgrade or replacement, you'll find that you can no longer receive instant push notifications for Gmail accounts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anonymouse
I think the people guessing that Google is reporting your whereabouts and sending data on your phone back to the hive are more likely correct. Eventually they'll tell us it was inadvertent, then we'll find out everything they've said publicly was, as usual, a brazen lie.
Who said they're not sending up info? I would think that of course they're sending up your location, in order to generate specific cards because of your calendar, location, traffic, pending packages, etc.
Anticipating your needs, based partly on your location, is the whole point of the app.
D'oh!
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
An obvious question: does this mean that if you have this on a WiFi only device (an iPad, say), than this functionality is not available? Every time I turn off Wifi (on my LTE device) iOS chides me that this will make location services less accurate, so is there some other hack for WiFi, or you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
I was guessing that if cell was not available, the significant change API switched to WiFi ... but as I said, that was just a guess. Rereading the docs, however...
"In iOS 4.0 and later, you can use the significant-change location service to receive location events. This service offers a significant power savings and provides accuracy that is good enough for most apps. It uses the device’s cellular radio ..."
Makes it sound like a Wi-Fi only device will have to use another location API, like the one for boundaries, which would definitely use more CPU power.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
An obvious question: does this mean that if you have this on a WiFi only device (an iPad, say), than this functionality is not available? Every time I turn off Wifi (on my LTE device) iOS chides me that this will make location services less accurate, so is there some other hack for WiFi, or you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
FWIW Google Now works just fine on a WiFi only Nexus 7. I'd be fairly surprised if it won't do as well on WiFi only iPads.
When Google got caught hacking all those WiFi sets while doing Street View, they didn't have to give back the data afterwards, so yeah, they know the whereabouts of every WiFi on the planet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
What the heck are you talking about? Google regularly pushes my gmail to my iOS mail app, so maybe it just hates you personally?
It is something new. My iPhone and iPad are fine but when my wife restored her iPad, the google exchange stopped pushing. It is a known issue and she is now looking for a new host for our family emails. You are like me, a heritage user till you restore or upgrade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
When Google got caught hacking all those WiFi sets while doing Street View, they didn't have to give back the data afterwards, so yeah, they know the whereabouts of every WiFi on the planet.
Hacking WiFi sets?? Registering WiFi network names and locations isn't against the law anymore than noting the color of your car or the name on your mailbox if I drive by.
Did they really hack anything or simply record WiFi data that was freely being sent?
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
What the heck are you talking about? Google regularly pushes my gmail to my iOS mail app, so maybe it just hates you personally?
Google stopped giving Sync away to new customers for free earlier this year.
FAQ: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2716936
Article: http://www.macworld.com/article/2022321/what-the-end-of-google-sync-means-to-you.html
Probably Google had to pay more for their license of MS ActiveSync.
(Some might remember that Google wrote Congress last year, suggesting that de facto standards should have the same rate protection as FRAND patents. Ignorant sites reported this as a grab for Apple patents, but it had nothing to do with Apple. It was only about single-company patents that were sold to everyone as a standard... patents like ActiveSync in particular... then later relicensed to holding companies so old contracts were nullified and the price could go up.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gatorguy
Hacking WiFi sets?? Registering WiFi network names and locations isn't against the law anymore than noting the color of your car or the name on your mailbox if I drive by.
The name of the WiFi is not important, it is the Mac address and IP they want. I can change the name anytime I want. I cannot change the Mac address. That info is not being broadcast. They have to hack it to get it. Public WiFi is another situation altogether. If all they wanted was the name then 100 million of them are going to be Linksys or Netgear.
Source and destination layer 2 addresses are most certainly part of all wireless communication. How would the devices know which data is for them or which isn't if they didn't have addresses in the packet header?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
Source and destination layer 2 addresses are most certainly part of all wireless communication. How would the devices know which data is for them or which isn't if they didn't have addresses in the packet header?
I suppose that is right. Perhaps hacking was not the correct term use but the IP address that is exposed is the DHCP one, no? Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
That depends on your use o the word private.
If you have a hidden SSID, the human readable name for your WiFI network, you aren't really hiding it as this can still be sent in packets. All you're doing is keeping it from showing up in a list of available networks.
If you only allow certain MAC addresses to access your network anyone can still intercept those packets. In fact, each device will still receive these packets if they are in range but the router will simply ignore them if they are not part of the approved list of MAC addresses, just as all other devices simply discard anything not from your router's address to your device's address.
This means you need to encrypt your data over your network, something that simply doesn't happen on public networks. But remember that the data is still be sent out in all directions and recorded by all devices with the appropriate frequency and band, it's just that it can't read the packet data because its encrypted, but the header and footer are still readable, which is how these devices know which items are for them and if its been damaged.
I don't know of any cracks that can break WPA2, which is what everyone should be using. WPA is less secure and WEP is very easy to break. I would doubt that Google would take the time to hack any of the encrypted packets they come across. Even the easily hackable WEP requires that you retrieve enough data to figure out the passcode which I think is unlikely with a car driving by.
Speaking of Google, it's always been a head scratcher to me that Google doesn't offer a free VPN service so users can protect all their data on public WiFi, or even when using a work computer were you want extra protection. The benefit for Google is they can not only see what you search for, but also the sites you go to. I may not trust Google too much but I certainly trust them more than the average person sitting in a coffee shop (or in van in the parking lot) that could use any number of free apps to grab user data.
PS: If AI offered a paid subscription that offered SSL I would jump on that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
Google's gathering hotspot location info with their Street View cars was fine.
Heck, anyone can collect hotspot MAC addresses. Many groups have done it. Early public domain hotspot positioning projects gathered donated info. Skyhook used that info, plus drove around to get their own hotspot database that the iPhone used at first in place of GPS.
In fact, iOS devices gather hotspot info every time they ask for a location, or you turn on your phone, or you make a call... and send it up to Apple (since they now use their own database instead of Skyhook's).
--
What Europe complained about was that the code that Google used to collect hotspot location info, also inadvertently stored a file with anything the code could hear during the few seconds the car was driving past an in-use, non-encrypted hotspot.
Several notes about that:
1) It wasn't done on purpose. The locating code was originally written by a famous Silicon Valley wardriver, and still had his info-gathering library in it... and no later developer had noticed before it was deployed to the Street View cars.
2) Google voluntarily divulged its existence. They didn't have to, they could've just deleted it, but they had nothing to hide. They never used the info even after discovering it. (It would be pretty useless, if you think about it. Most seconds-long comms would probably be web pages etc with nothing personal. Passwords would've gone over SSL and not be seen.)
3) In the US, it's legal to intercept any communications that are freely available to the public... and a non-secure WiFi hotspot counts as freely available, since you're sending signals off your property. (It can be illegal to USE the hotspot, but it's legal to LISTEN to it.)
In short, it was a European hullabaloo over a trumped up privacy issue. But it made great political headlines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
1) Learn the difference between push and pull.
In igriv's case, "ignorance is bliss"...
Quote:
Originally Posted by tribalogical
In igriv's case, "ignorance is bliss"...
It is very consistent that you say things like this while having no idea of what you are talking about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KDarling
Google's gathering hotspot location info with their Street View cars was fine.
Heck, anyone can collect hotspot MAC addresses. Many groups have done it. Early public domain hotspot positioning projects gathered donated info. Skyhook used that info, plus drove around to get their own hotspot database that the iPhone used at first in place of GPS.
In fact, iOS devices gather hotspot info every time they ask for a location, or you turn on your phone, or you make a call... and send it up to Apple (since they now use their own database instead of Skyhook's).
--
What Europe complained about was that the code that Google used to collect hotspot location info, also inadvertently stored a file with anything the code could hear during the few seconds the car was driving past an in-use, non-encrypted hotspot.
Several notes about that:
1) It wasn't done on purpose. The locating code was originally written by a famous Silicon Valley wardriver, and still had his info-gathering library in it... and no later developer had noticed before it was deployed to the Street View cars.
2) Google voluntarily divulged its existence. They didn't have to, they could've just deleted it, but they had nothing to hide. They never used the info even after discovering it. (It would be pretty useless, if you think about it. Most seconds-long comms would probably be web pages etc with nothing personal. Passwords would've gone over SSL and not be seen.)
3) In the US, it's legal to intercept any communications that are freely available to the public... and a non-secure WiFi hotspot counts as freely available, since you're sending signals off your property. (It can be illegal to USE the hotspot, but it's legal to LISTEN to it.)
In short, it was a European hullabaloo over a trumped up privacy issue. But it made great political headlines.
Sorry, but your point of view is pretty biased to say the least.
From what I noticed the analogy drawn by the european legislation was an open front-door of a house (=private place).
Keeping the door open is negligent and therefore there's no base for huge damage claims, but nevertheless nobody is entitled to enter the house and take something along.
The discussion was whether it's prohibited by european privacy law to copy or use private data accidentally or negligently unprotected.
Depending on your point of view this issue might seem overblown, but hullabaloo is definitely the wrong word to describe this ongoing privacy discussion.
Google didn't have the approval of the data owners to sniff the private data.
Using publicly broadcasted parameters like the MAC address or the router location is fine, the network traffic is not, because they weren't the intended recipient.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KDarling
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Anyway the methodology is not as important to the fact that under the pretense of collecting Street View imagery they were obtaining WiFi info at the same time, some of it private, hence they have a lot of data about private WiFi locations.
Google's gathering hotspot location info with their Street View cars was fine.
Yes and soliciting door to door or hanging advertising on residential doors is fine as well, so long as you have a permit. Google needs city, county, or state permits to go through the neighborhoods taking pictures and for doing low altitude flyover photography. If Google went to my city government and asked for a permit to do Street View they would need to explain the purpose of the project. I'd be willing to bet there was no mention of ...Oh by the way, while we are collecting imagery we are also going to be probing resident's home networks to glean whatever we can snag. No, I don't think they would mention that part in the permit application because it would never be approved, at least not by our city government.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DominoXML
Depending on your point of view this issue might seem overblown, but hullabaloo is definitely the wrong word to describe this ongoing privacy discussion.
Google didn't have the approval of the data owners to sniff the private data.
Using publicly broadcasted parameters like the MAC address or the router location is fine, the network traffic is not, because they weren't the intended recipient.
Google did not use any of that data, or even know it existed at first, and the EU officials understood all that. So it could've been an easy case of, okay, delete the data and be more careful next time. Itself, it was drawn out for political purposes only. They even made Google keep the data as evidence for a while, which seems like a pretty bad privacy idea.
That said, using "overblown" in place of "hullabaloo" is fine with me
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Google needs city, county, or state permits to go through the neighborhoods taking pictures and for doing low altitude flyover photography.
I'm not aware of any driving permits needed in the USA, although anything is possible. Got an example?
As for aerial photography... umm, that's Bing or Apple, not Google. And the plane should stay above minimum safe altitude (MSA) and not need a permit AFAIK. (MSA is 500' in the boondocks, and 1000' in populated areas.)
Quote:
If Google went to my city government and asked for a permit to do Street View they would need to explain the purpose of the project. I'd be willing to bet there was no mention of ...Oh by the way, while we are collecting imagery we are also going to be probing resident's home networks to glean whatever we can snag. No, I don't think they would mention that part in the permit application because it would never be approved, at least not by our city government.
A city cannot prevent someone from intercepting WiFi MAC addresses. The FCC takes priority.
Moreover, iPhones do it all the time.