[onionisafruit]

I just queried my home ssid on there. I thought it was a pretty unique pun, but 216 other access points have the same ssid. If my phone was probing for it then you could narrow me down quite a bit, but you would need more than that.

[modderation]

I'd agree that a basic mapping of SSID name to approximate location is a bit useless on its own, but it can be combined with other information to narrow down your physical location.

Geographically speaking, how were those SSID's distributed? Were they spread all around the world, across the continent, or were they all in the same city?

For example, if your home SSID was known and those 216 SSID's were spread around the world, your home could likely be narrowed down based on some general facts from forum posts. "You spell honor with a U! You often complain about the rain on the forums, and those posts came from that ISP's IP block! According to the public coverage maps for that ISP in that English-speaking country that uses British spellings, your wireless network overlaps with this side of the street, give or take 30m. Let's check it out!"

Paranoid fantasy? I truly hope so.

[lazide]

If you used the other SSIDs your phone was looking for and cross referenced, I bet confidence could get a lot closer to certain - 99%?

[nullc]

right, but probably I can make it unique knowing a town name or just one or two extra things about you.