In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by CARPETBURN:

Scotland has four international airports: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow Prestwick and Aberdeen. Ive just looked at there only appears to be 2 planes on the ground in the whole of the area.

I don't think it shows the ones on the ground.

Sorry yep you are correct, it also does not show all flights or model of plane after a bit more reading which would explain why when i looked in various areas things seemed a bit sparse. And i gather its only stuff leaving Europe it tracks and nothing else..... Unless every airline in the states are basically on strike

EDIT: Still a pretty cool site though

Edited by deleted (Mon 30-Aug-10 23:19:02)

We know that Google travelled around the country collecting data about wireless home networks.

Some things I'm unsure of:

1) Can mobile masts detect wireless home networks and collect data from them?
2) Does Google Chrome/Chromium contain software that sends information about your home network (including MAC addresses and other hardware info) back to Google?

This might help a bit. We were looking at this at work a few weeks ago. Our wireless network uses the same SSIDs for the full network. All users go out on the same IP address no matter where they are on the network.

So, in one building clicked the location button and it found it to within a few yards. Take the same laptop to another building 2 miles away and once again it is able to find where it is to within a few yards.

However, turn off the wirreless card and connect via a physical wire and it cannot locate. So, it is definitely the wireless card it is using.

I believe it uses the wireless card to scan the available wireless networks. Based on which networks it picks up allows it to triangulate position. It has to do this via MAC of wireless access point not via SSID (as the same SSID is used on both sites).

An encrypted connection can still advertise it's SSID and for a laptop to negotiate login with it it has to have a MAC address to talk to - therefore it is possible to grab MAC address from encrypted routers.

What I'm not sure is how google keep it up to date. Obviously they had the cars go around but that wouldn't take account of routers moving/changing. However, the iphone, android, etc all have location awareness - they themselves could collect all the local WAP details along with GPS and send it to google. That would let them keep their databases well up to date (but I've never seen anything stating that they do this).

I do not have a mobile phone switched on. I live in a fairly remote location and I am the only wireless network around. I wonder if for this to work you have to have a Google application like Chrome installed? If it does maybe the way it works is like this:

1) Google has a database of home wireless networks which it collected under the guise of Google Streetview by driving past houses.
2) When you go online Chrome/Chromium phones home to say that a particular network is online and uses the Streetview database to get your location.

Maybe if you do not use any Google software and/or Google did not drive past your house with your router switched on you are safe?

Deep within Chrome/Chromium there is an option to tick "Do not allow any site to track my physical location" which by default has Google as an exception.

Edited by deleted (Tue 31-Aug-10 12:15:32)

But if they are able to collect it from the location apps on iphone, android, etc then potentially you would need to frisk anyone getting anywhere near your house to ensure they don't have their phones enabled for location. Maybe get all visitors to turn phones off before they get within 200 yards of the house.

Of course it may be that the phones don't collect the data but I can't see how they could keep the database up to date if they didn't have a source like that (so when google asks if it is OK to use your location maybe it is also really asking if it is ok to scan for wireless in your location and upload any that exist in the area to their database?). Have to say if I was writing an app for it it's how I would want to do it - millions of data collection devices out there, massive potential.

sounds a bit worrying to me.

thankfully I have nothing to do with Google or their Latitude and if they do it by router, then they would be in for a shock as I have a different router now.

I think if Google uses your mobile to track you they can only use mobile masts - they will not be able to locate you precisely. But if you access the internet via a wireless modem they can pinpoint your house because they can use the database they developed when they did the Streetview drive pasts.

I'm afraid I don't believe that is the case.

The smartphones I mention have wireless, 3G/GSM and GPS. Therefore they can use any of those methods to get your location. So, say an iphone is near your house. The GPS and GSM methods give a pretty precise location. They can then upload all of the wireless access point data they collect to a central database - which therefore also has the location.

Another user then comes by with just wireless and is able to get their position from that.

Using this method GPS, GSM triangulation and wireless access points can all be used on their own or in combination to get a pretty accurate position.

In reply to a post by infra_red:

Does Google Chrome/Chromium contain software that sends information about your home network (including MAC addresses and other hardware info) back to Google?

See my earlier post.

Chrome has 'Google Gears' built in so if you have 'latitude' settings to allow it then it will show your location. Working it out from MAC addresses of wireless access points - see earlier link.

In reply to a post by b4dger:

In reply to a post by infra_red:

Does Google Chrome/Chromium contain software that sends information about your home network (including MAC addresses and other hardware info) back to Google?

See my earlier post.

Chrome has 'Google Gears' built in so if you have 'latitude' settings to allow it then it will show your location. Working it out from MAC addresses of wireless access points - see earlier link.

Well i been looking into this a bit more and ive figured out what it does and how it does it.
basically it sends...

1*your computer�s IP address,
2*your MAC address
3*information collected about nearby wireless points, and
4*a client identifier, which is assigned by Google, that appears to expiry every 2 weeks.
(YES i agree sounds like malware)

Google Location Services then returns your estimated geolocation (e.g., latitude and longitude). The accuracy varies depending on all the above information it had to collect and compare. The more wireless spots in your area the more likely its going to be close to getting your exact location (assuming google have info about those wireless spots). Same is true if theres only one strong hotspot in your area (say you are in a field and only the farmer is nearby with a wireless router, it will find you).

Depending on browser it doesnt even need an app or plugin to do it, the code is built into the browser you could just visit a site that switches geo location to on and tracks you (all the google things are, are basically nice frontends).

Fortunately for Firefox atleast there is a way to turn it off (dunno about IE and chrome not looked at those yet). To stop it with firefox.......
1 In the URL bar, type about:config and press enter
2 click ill be careful i promise
3 Type geo.enabled in the filter bar
4 Double click on the geo.enabled preference see it reads as disabled
5 Type browser.geolocation in the filter bar and make sure thats disabled also

Voila no more tracking, (should also stop those web ads if you have ever seen them about overly sexed people in your specific area/town wanting to meet you <<< yep they are done in the same sort of fashion).

Chrome and IE should in theory also have similar hidden away settings, though i spose it is possible you just cant turn it off in those browsers. (though i doubt it).

HTH people

Edited by deleted (Tue 31-Aug-10 17:13:56)