Wi-Fi Access Point Scans Can Betray A Person's Location

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
While this may sound like something that would happen in a low-budget movie, researchers say that, not only is it possible, it is happening.

Many Android applications collect information on Wi-Fi access points, which researchers contend can be used to figure out where a person is more than 90 percent of the time. The privacy implications of Wi-Fi access point scanning is often overlooked but presents a risk if the information is abused, according to the study, written by the Technical University of Denmark, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen.
Click to expand...
 
Bottom line, a network connected device can be tracked. That's in low and high budget movies.
 
Agreed. If it can can send outbound communications, it can be tracked. Granted, that is an oversimplification, but definitely not earth shattering
 
Duh.


Well, this is good for general public education I guess.
 
FM 3370 said:
Just another way for the scared government to spy on us.
Click to expand...

not just the gov, stores have been using it to track for a while now. you can either just turn off wifi while you're out or use pry-fi (android... rooted) to spoof mac addresses and generate new ones over a set time.
 
heatlesssun said:
Bottom line, a network connected device can be tracked. That's in low and high budget movies.
Click to expand...

Only because someone made a pro-active effort to make it that way. Dynamic IP's from a state-wide ISP should be pretty unreliable even up to the city level. The Wi-Fi mapping is proactively done expressly for the purpose of tracking you. I don't consider that inevitable or not preventable.
 
So google got busted doing with their google map vehicles collecting AP info..., so now they just take it from Android OS instead and get 10000000x more data..
 
Not sure if some of you quite understand this article. It's not about Android phones transmitting any location relevant data -- its about someone being able to make an app that scans for WiFi AP's. Based on keeping a log of the wifi ap's it sees, and the time and dates, you can basically figure out when and where that phone has been, as you can look up the mac address of most AP's online and get the location of that AP.

Essentially it is saying that while the wifi scanning permission is separate from the location info permission, you can still gain location info via the wifi scanning permission.
 
So, any app that has wifi scanning permission (and in some cases apps can scan wifi even when wifi is disabled) -- they can collect that data, and upload it to a server, and boom they can track you. I am sure there are already apps out there doing this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top