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> Google has harvested the location, name and signal strength of many millions of wireless networks across the world

Don't forget that that dataset of wireless locations is updated continuously through crowdsourcing.

>> Google has harvested the location, name and signal strength of many millions of wireless networks across the world > Don't forget that that dataset of wireless locations is updated continuously through crowdsourcing.

Along with Apple, Skyhook, Nokia and a number of other location providers.

to make this a bit clearer, android, apple, etc devices send back wifi BSSID+GPS coordinates to the mothership for AGPS purposes. Im really suprised there hasn't been more concern about this.

As an engineering project this is truly a resourceful and rather elegant solution to tune a Kahlman filter for positioning. But on the level of privacy ... big consequences. The BSSID allows tracking when someone moves to a different place. And since that's tied to GPS with multiple captures over time you get a pretty accurate location for the WiFi device.

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