[bpp]

When I was a student at Brown, Facebook would report which dorm you were logged in from, right there on your profile (for all to see!). If Facebook knew where you were on campus, campus IT certainly has a view into your physical location. Nothing about this surprises me.

[jesboat]

Was that on ethernet? If so, there's nothing particularly nefarious: each building had a /24 and the building's name was in the reverse dns. It's not particularly different from how many [citation needed] commercial ISPs have town names in reverse dns, except the subnetting mirrors geography in a bit more detail. Dorm ethernet has since died.

If it was over WiFi, I would be much more concerned

[dmurray]

What's different about it being on WiFi, where you most likely would be connecting to a base station in the same building that was then wired in over ethernet?

[jesboat]

They didn't (and probably still don't) subnet by building on wifi, so more precise location than "on Brown's wifi" would have required intentional information sharing.

[vermilingua]

Why would wifi be more concerning? The access points would presumably be broadcasting the same subnets as are available on ethernet.

[jasonpbecker]

I remember these days when it helpfully pre-filled in Bronson as my probable location as a freshman. That was back when you could list all your courses and sections, which was incredibly helpful to find people to complain about Math 17 problem sets.