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Firefox Add-On To Track Your Location Via Wi-Fi
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Oct 08, 2008 12:32 PM
from the location-aware dept.
from the location-aware dept.
Barence writes "Mozilla Labs has unveiled a new Add-on that allows Firefox to pinpoint your location based on Wi-Fi signals. The feature, called Geode, is a prototype for the location-tracking technology that will be built into the forthcoming Firefox 3.1. Geode is designed to work with websites that rely on knowing your location, such as mapping and geotagging services. The prospect of Firefox having the ability to track your location raises obvious privacy fears. Mozilla insists users will remain in complete control. 'With Geode, when a website requests your location a notification bar will ask how much information you want to give that site: your exact location, your neighbourhood, your city, or nothing at all,' the Mozilla Labs blog claims."
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Big Brother is like a fox on fire (Score:5, Funny)
And twice as annoying.
Excuse me while I install this on my son's laptop ... without him knowing.
They'll never track me (Score:5, Funny)
I'm wearing my tinfoil underwear.
Oh crap, this means I need to wear underwear at the computer.
Re:They'll never track me (Score:5, Funny)
Let's see, based on nearby access points, I'd say you're on Linksys Avenue, Linksysburgh, Linksys County, LI.
Parent
Why Not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not let it give the user the option of telling the web site some arbitrary location?
Re: (Score:2)
You can get the source and make it do just that. My personal hope is that the default this to off and make you activate it manually. Also, what are the chances that this gets abused by law enforcement?
Re:Why Not... (Score:5, Informative)
If you'd bother reading to the second sentence: " The feature, called Geode, is a prototype for the location-tracking technology that will be built into the forthcoming Firefox 3.1."
You can't not install it, it's already installed.
Other than that, you seem to be traveling.... you get the point
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why Not...because... (Score:2)
Because the Dept of Homeland Spying would get misleading info on your whereabouts.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No kidding. I'd love to be able to do this just to get around those damn you're-not-from-America-so-can't-watch-this-video-clip messages. I particularly hate it when (Adobe Flash Player, I'm looking at you) they let me install the program, WATCH THE AD, then give me the message.
Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Going back to hard-wired connection (Score:5, Funny)
I sure hope Best Buy still sells that 2-mile long ethernet cable...
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'd tap that! Wait...
... It's an addon, not a cookie. (Score:5, Insightful)
The addon has to be manually installed.
It's not a piece of malware, it's not surreptitiously installed by remote servers. It's strictly voluntary.
The only privacy concerns which arise from this are if people are not careful enough with the addon to disable it.
Re:... It's an addon, not a cookie. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except the summary states "the location-tracking technology... will be built into the forthcoming Firefox 3.1."
I'd much rather this remain a separately downloadable add-on.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Except the summary states "the location-tracking technology... will be built into the forthcoming Firefox 3.1."
I'd much rather this remain a separately downloadable add-on.
and it also says you can make sure sites get "nothing at all"
Additionally, being open source, you can grab the SRC and make builds of it minus that code.
Re:... It's an addon, not a cookie. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just being included would make it open to security problems. Someday a vulnerability might let a sight activate it using JavaScript, for example.
I'm a minimalist. If I'm not going to ever use it, I'd rather it not be on the computer at all, especially if it's a potential privacy issue.
And we all know that your average Firefox user will always be going to mozilla for their builds. I doubt a fork that removes this component would gain much traction.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't need much traction though.
If the only difference between the fork and the original is a few comment indicators, one person could easily do it and post major builds.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd much rather this remain a separately downloadable add-on.
It is designed so that every application has to get the agreement from the user first. He/She may choose to permit access to the accurate or approximate coordinates (or to deny access).
Source: heise.de (german) [heise.de]
Gee (Score:2)
Solution to a non-problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
They can already pinpoint your location pretty well using your IP address (and without your permission). So what's the point of this?
Re:Solution to a non-problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
IP geolocation usually only gets you down to the city level usually and even then the city you get isn't always accurate. Using wifi signals (I assume they keep a keep a database of SSIDs and AP MAC addresses to compare against) should be able to get your location down to at least the city block level which is much more useful.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Like on a 3G iPhone? Their pseudo-GPS using wireless access points gets pretty darn close. It usually pinpoints me within a building or two.
I think it would be useful to at least have this option on my UMPC, even through Firefox. Business trips can often take me to places I have no interest in going; once there, at least I wouldn't be totally lost.
Re: (Score:2)
Think mobile computing.
Consider a search for the nearest coffee shop, video store, etc. within walking distance. You can look for a street address on the nearby buildings (good luck with that in some areas) and type it in, or you can allow you mapping app of choice to figure out where you are and look it up automatically.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Because you get lousy resolution with Geo-pos-IP, and even the bad services available today are pretty expensive.
Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Just one implementation of W3C Geolocation (Score:2, Informative)
http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html [w3.org]
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/10/introducing-geode/ [mozilla.com]
Forgot a function (Score:5, Insightful)
Geode is designed to work with websites that rely on knowing your location, such as mapping, geotagging services, and location-based advertising.
Hey, they've got to be making money off of it somehow.
Control is not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Just like providing DRM systems, there is the danger, when providing this capacity, for websites to begin to demand it, something they can't easily do now because there's no infrastructure to demand it.
Of course, this is a constant danger/possibility - some days I regret that Javascript was invented because a number of sites don't work at all unless I tell NoScript to allow JS on them. Cost of progress, I guess...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
there is the danger, when providing this capacity, for websites to begin to demand it
There is also the source code, freely available and modifiable, which means you could easily tell such websites that your current location is Fuckoff, in the fine state of NoneOfYourDamnedBusiness.
a number of sites don't work at all unless I tell NoScript to allow JS on them.
Hey, it could always be worse. You could always stumble on a site that doesn't work unless you allow Flash on it.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be the height of stupidity for a website to require this since it would require all their users to not only be using wifi, but be using wifi on a registered WAN. I imagine this would take a huge chunk out of their potential user base.
Then again, for DRM stupidity was no obstacle. So, who knows.
Questions (Score:2, Interesting)
Is this IP address driven? Is this mostly for public hotspots? Will one be able to register their home Wifi signal?
Will one be able to register their neighbors unsecured wifi signal?
Will there be reverse look uo p for public hotspots? How about "Public" hotspots?
How does wifi "pinpoint your location"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this require each hotspot owner to register the location of his/her hotspot, so that a database can be queried to find the location?
e.g. "I can see access points with MAC addresses 00:60:08:57:3C:D2 and 00:E0:18:77:D6:40 so I know I'm at 37 23.516 -122 02.625.."
How many hotspot owners can be bothered to register their correct location? And re-register it if their IP address changes? How many even change their password?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It could be updated by the users of firefox, assuming the world didnt move to the west 20meters you should be able to figure out a few routers moving at a time. Sounds like a really fun/interesting code challenge.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
e.g. "I can see access points with MAC addresses 00:60:08:57:3C:D2 and 00:E0:18:77:D6:40 so I know I'm at 37 23.516 -122 02.625.."
Is a web browser even allowed to have access to information like MAC addresses? I figure it ping's a few known servers and calculates its location from the time. In which case, it could easily be fooled by a VPN or Tor.
Privacy depends on the nature of services (Score:2, Interesting)
If a service can offer a better experience if it knows my location without having to login and identify myself, it is useful in many scenarios. For example, advertising a deal or a offering a coupon for an item in a nearby store. But like any technology, it can definitely be abused.
There are a few problems with WiFi based location estimation. For example, the SSID may change or vanish. Secondly, it can easily be abused by reporting false location. On the contrary, it can work indoors unlike most commercial
Tracking an IP (Score:4, Funny)
Then I'll create a GUI interface in Visual Basic and see if I can track an IP address
Compatible with what iPhone websites use? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there even such a thing anyway?
I hope the Firefox team, Apple, Opera and Google will soon sit down and establish a standard for such things (new metas, new javascript, whatever). Tell Microsoft about it, but don't wait for them.
Also, won't AMD sue for using the Geode [wikipedia.org] name?
Undefined license for proprietary component! (Score:5, Interesting)
From the included LICENSE.TXT:
"The XPCom component contained within the contents of this extension is licensed by
Skyhook Wireless, Inc. ("Skyhook") and are subject to the Skyhook license and
terms of use (the "Skyhook License"); you may not use this component except
in compliance with the Skyhook License.
You may obtain a copy of the Skyhook License at [need URL]"
I didn't look long, but I could not find any "Skyhook License" on Skyhook's website (which is I guess why they chose not to fill in the URL!). I certainly would not use a product for which the license was in question like this, especially considering the proprietary, binary-only DLLs they provide. Not that I would be able to try it out, since it only includes 32-bit Windows and Mac libraries, no Linux at all.
Buyer beware, as they say...
How close can you get with just your IP? (Score:2)
If they have this kind of geolocation information about where Wifi access points are, they probably have the ability to track you down to at least a neighborhood just knowing your IP address for an awful lot of WAPs in their database.
So even without this plugin, if you use public Wifi you're giving a fair amount of information about your location to the sites you visit.
What, am I worried about this? No. Should I be?
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're spot-on. As MySpace/Facebook have proven, not using the service doesn't mean that a whole lot of personal information about you can't be revealed by your "friends" who are members.
Imagine that Google (or some other nefarious agency) starts infecting, err, "adding logging" to WiFi access points. I'm sure it'll be innocuous - protects the children, necessity for the war on terror, etc. But, just like your device can collect all the WiFi access point info and report it, getting back a locatio
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine that Google (or some other nefarious agency)
Would that be the Department of Google? Or the Federal Google Administration?
Other location services (Score:3, Informative)
There are other ways to approximate your location when you aren't using wi-fi. As an example, http://www.geobytes.com/ipLocator.htm [geobytes.com] will give you a location derived from your ISP's. Also, a way to set a location in your Firefox profile would be useful for desktop PCs that rarely move. And I should note that Ubiquity is currently using the MaxMind geo-api (http://www.maxmind.com/app/api [maxmind.com]) for very similar purposes.
How about... (Score:2, Interesting)
Firefox 3.1? (Score:4, Interesting)
And thus marks the end my my upgrade path with Firefox. It's been nice, so long and thanks for all the fish!
Re: (Score:2)
Enough with the built in "features". The awesome bar was bad enough, this is a step too far. By all means offer it as an add-on. Surely the whole point of add-ons is that people can start with a basic browser and choose which features are useful to them?
It's time for a fork.
Alright! (Score:2, Funny)
Now I know exactly where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is!
Re: (Score:2)