In reply to a post by john2007:

It probably works off the MAC address of your wireless router. When the Google cars went around the world photographing for streetmap they also sniffed local wireless traffic.

No probably about it.

If you move house and take your router with you it will confuse Latitude, if it has no other way to get your location (e.g. GPS) it will base your location off your router MAC address.

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Aug-10 09:15:40)

maybe Google's streetview camera cars with their wifi sniffers recorded the SSID and the location ?

I wonder how they then link my IP address when I'm online to the MAC they sniffed out? Is there something in Chrome/Chromium which is sending information about my computer back to "Google HQ"?

No maybe about it.. they did.. and then claimed it was a purely accidental thing - and while our tame privacy watchdog waved it through (rather like Phorm) other countries are really annoyed about it and are investigating the possibility thet Google has deliberately infringed privacy laws. IMHO Google is getting too big for its boots and needs to be slapped back into line - along with a couple of other "cyber entities". be interesting to see if they have me pinned won like that.. I would never sign up to any Google services, they want too much of my privacy.

Have you got a dynamic or static IP address?

I think it more likely triangulation on mobile masts is being used, as someone already suggested.

"maybe Google's streetview camera cars with their wifi sniffers recorded the SSID and the location ?"

As Warweezil already said, there's no maybe about it, that's what they did; I thought this was widely known these days?

One of Germany's equivalents of Top Gear (except with real content) yesterday ran a whole feature on Street Map and its privacy implications: http://www.vox.de/cms/sendungen/auto-mobil.html

I would be very interested to know what data is uploaded from Google Maps for Mobile or equivalent smartphone apps. It too could sniff for SSIDs, it too knows where it is (either via GPS or via Skyhook WIreless or similar database of SSID->location), and unllike the streetview cars, GMM can be used for frequent high-volume updates. Anyone seen any writeups on whether GMM "phones home" about where it is and what it can see?

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wifibugs/

You need Google Gears installed (Chrome has it built in) then you could follow the test link in the above Google page.

In reply to a post by infra_red:

I wonder how they then link my IP address when I'm online to the MAC they sniffed out? Is there something in Chrome/Chromium which is sending information about my computer back to "Google HQ"?

I doubt its anything to do with your IP address, an IP address does not resolve direct to your exact location (IE street name and house number) which is what you claimed in your posting.

My IPaddress for example resolves to a town 30(ish) miles away from me (or it used to cant be bothered to go do a look up at the moment).

An IP address will not reveal your personal location right down to road and house number.

If it were doing that, you could in theory track passenger planes as they fly around the world, (Providing its got internet onboard and you had the IPaddress) and i doubt any defence department would be happy such a simple google tool allowed that.

The MAC theory of your router is possible, assuming you run an open non-encrypted network, they could had grabbed that.

I doubt its anything to do with the SSID, as thats easily changed in a router, so if you changed that suddenly it wouldnt know who you were. (assuming it was pure SSID identification).

This is more likely down to GPS marking, tracking as others have also stated.

Whatever it is either you gave them your location or you are running things open see they and anyone else could of grabbed the info.

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Aug-10 19:15:13)

In reply to a post by CARPETBURN:

The MAC theory of your router is possible, assuming you run an open non-encrypted network, they could had grabbed that.

I think you can see the MAC of wireless routers even with encryption (WPA2-AES) enabled, and of course if its in use, disabling beaconing (SSID broadcast) is pointless.

SkyHookWireless did it long before Google. Just anyone with an original iPhone or iPod Touch how the Maps application knew where it was. Back in 2007. Without GPS.

In reply to a post by CARPETBURN:

you could in theory track passenger planes as they fly around the world, (Providing its got internet onboard and you had the IPaddress) and i doubt any defence department would be happy such a simple google tool allowed that.

You can track aircraft already without any onboard interaction .... http://www.flightradar24.com/