{"id":292,"date":"2010-01-24T20:28:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T04:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.outflux.net\/blog\/?p=292"},"modified":"2010-01-25T00:15:42","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T08:15:42","slug":"google-is-wardriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/archives\/2010\/01\/24\/google-is-wardriving\/","title":{"rendered":"Google is wardriving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, a while back, Google started providing <a href=\"http:\/\/google-latlong.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/blue-circle-comes-to-your-desktop.html\">location<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/latitude\/apps\">services<\/a>.  This seemed pretty cool, but I kind of ignored it until recently when I was playing with my Android&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/developer.android.com\/reference\/android\/location\/package-summary.html\">location API<\/a>.  With the GPS off, and no cell towers visible (my basement gets terrible cell service), my phone knew within about 500 feet of where it actually was.  All I was connected to was my wifi.<\/p>\n<p>Bottom line: it seems that Google, among other methods, is likely <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wardriving\">wardriving<\/a> while photographing for <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/help\/maps\/streetview\/\">Street View<\/a>.  They are now able to pinpoint wifi access points if they happened to see it while driving through your city.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m really rather astonished that no one is freaking out about this; I&#8217;m a bit unnerved.  I <a href=\"http:\/\/outflux.net\/software\/shorts\/geoloc.py\">implemented the location-of-your-wifi<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/p\/gears\/wiki\/GeolocationAPI\">API<\/a> quickly, so I could terrify myself further.  You can do lookups via my <a href=\"http:\/\/outflux.net\/geoloc\/\">location website<\/a> too, if you want.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE<\/strong>: yeah, it would seem to be crowd-sourced wifi and cell tower triangulation data.  I should say &#8220;Google is WarCrowding&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p style='text-align:left'>&copy; 2010, <a href=\"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/\">Kees Cook<\/a>. This work is licensed under a <a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License<\/a>.<br \/><a rel=\"license\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"CC BY-SA 4.0\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-sa\/4.0\/88x31.png\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, a while back, Google started providing location services. This seemed pretty cool, but I kind of ignored it until recently when I was playing with my Android&#8217;s location API. With the GPS off, and no cell towers visible (my basement gets terrible cell service), my phone knew within about 500 feet of where it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18,1,7,6,14,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296,"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}