Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pixl97 3014 days ago
For those on cable service with long lasting IP addresses..

You don't use FB, right? But you let your friend you your wireless off his phone, and he had the FB app and location services on. Well, FB now knows exactly where your IP is, for a while at least.

1 comments

No. I block all FB domains at the router, and force all dns requests to redirect to it.
Doesn’t matter. As long as a single smartphone with GPS enabled roams past your WiFi (and sees its advertised MAC address), any app on the phone can associate the user’s GPS coordinates with your router’s MAC address. Do this with enough users, and enough routers, and you’ve got a nearly perfect geographical mapping of WiFi routers.

This isn’t a conspiracy; Apple and Google have been doing this sort of triangulation for a long time, and even use it as a method of saving battery while avoiding the GPS radio.

Any app on your phone, including the Facebook app, can see nearby WiFi networks (maybe this is a gated permission now?). If the app has enough users with GPS enabled, its developer can easily build a GPS/WiFi map.

Well what you described has absolutely nothing to do with GP's premise, and to which I was replying:

> But you let your friend you your wireless off his phone, and he had the FB app and location services on. Well, FB now knows exactly where your IP is, for a while at least.