[colug-432] precision of fixed platform browser geolocation

[FiL Farris]

It is possible its getting your location from info linked to your gmail
address.  I was floored by the location tracking Google does  when I read
through Google's new service agreement on my Android Phone.

Just a thought
On Jun 7, 2013 8:32 PM, "Richard Hornsby" <richardjhornsby at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was on my bank website at home on my Macbook, and asked it where the
> nearest ATM was.  Safari dutifully asked if I would like to allow the
> website, and Safari, to use my location.
>
> Sure, why not.  I know that geolocation from IP has been around for a long
> time.  I know that my hostname contains the name of the city I'm in.
>
> I was floored, however, by how precise an address it chose as my
> "approximate" location - to within 4 units (feet?) of my actual address.
>  i.e. if my house number is 10003 Main Street, it said that it was going to
> use 10007 Main Street as the address from which to begin the search.
>
> This is not a device with a GPS chip (that I'm aware of), and there is no
> cell signal to use.  Yet, there is nothing approximate about what it chose.
>  There are no public wifi access points anywhere close (I live in a
> somewhat rural area, but in a neighborhood, definitely not urban) like a
> coffee shop or other establishment.
>
> How is Safari (google maps?) getting the location that precisely?  Does
> google maps really have an internal map of private wifi access points and
> their locations?  Is this from the street view car that they
> "inadvertently" collected wireless data they sniffed?  Are they possibly
> sharing the access point information from their Google Fiber service to
> their maps/geolocation services and figuring it out that way?
>
> This can't simply be a browser thing alone - it is an OS level setting
> whether I want to allow geolocation services  to be enabled or not.  Anyone
> have insight into how this works?  If it is an OS protected call, is the OS
> making the request to somewhere for my location on behalf of and giving
> that to the browser?  If so, where is the information coming from?
> _______________________________________________
> colug-432 mailing list
> colug-432 at colug.net
> http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.colug.net/pipermail/colug-432/attachments/20130607/4fa2d111/attachment.html