[paulojreis]

Is this really a thing? WTF?

I feel very ashamed, as someone who works in IT, everytime this happens. I mean, people can opt-out, of course - but, in order to do that, they need to know what an SSID is, and how to change it. What about people who don't? Will we just assume that they don't care or that their opinion doesn't matter?

[DCKing]

As someone who works in IT, I always feel ashamed to see outrage over this. We somehow want both privacy as well as a freaking radio beacon spreading out a signal to hundreds of meters away. Let there be no mistake: using a Wi-Fi router in your house means you are voluntarily broadcasting an identifier to anyone within hundreds of meters. There can be no honest expectation of privacy there.

If you don't want people obtaining information from a radio beacon in your house then do not put a radio beacon in your house. But don't pester companies for opting out of the passive database of radio signals you are voluntarily sending into the world. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Furthermore, there is nothing intrinsically revealing about an SSID. If your SSID tells people information about you, the problem is the SSID and not the collection of that information. It is trivial to change your SSID to a pseudonymous one.

I know that a lot of people are not aware of the privacy consequences, but those people are not the ones making a point out of this. Once you educate yourself about the privacy consequences of using a Wi-Fi router, do not blame people for collecting information that you are actively and voluntarily broadcasting!

[mike-cardwell]

As you walk around, your phone broadcasts a list of wifi access points that you have connected to.

The existance of these databases mean that anyone who has unrestricted access to query the database, can probably figure out where anyone else who enters their vicinity, lives and works, completely passively.

[fulafel]

Well, having your curtains open also broadcasts an image of your living room on EM spectrum for hundreds of meters for anyone with optics... Same for eavesdropping (laser mic). Easy to listen maybe but you will still get convicted in both cases.

[DCKing]

The difference being that having a Wi-Fi router means actively powering a device that sends a signal beyond the perimeter and privacy of your home. A signal that, as evidenced by this app, can be passively [1] picked up and processed by any casual passer-by.

Having a Wi-Fi router with an SSID is the equivalent of installing a speaker on the top of your house and have it constantly spell a uniquish name to the neighborhood. It might be useful for you to have that, but you might want to think a bit about what it means for your privacy.

[1]: Not having to aim or target anything, not having to have exotic instruments, but being able to be picked up by anyone at all by just listening.

[makmanalp]

One could argue that the main purpose of the device (or the main reason users use the device) is not to broadcast identity, it is to let the user connect to the internet within the perimeter of their domicile.

Just like you can argue that the main purpose of windows is not so that people can look in, it's so that people can look out, and light comes in.

I agree partially with what you're saying, but there is a mismatch between user expectation and what the technology actually does. I don't think the fact that the user used it implies they consented to the technical side effects.

[fulafel]

Having the lights on in your living room or exercising your vocal cords still fit your description.

[DCKing]

Neither of these have either:

1) The same accessibility for a passerby outside of your house.

2) The same constant, location identifying properties or information content.

The things you mention cannot be described as beacons.

[justcommenting]

I can also passively collect plenty of WEP traffic being broadcasted over public property and decrypt it on my computer (but I don't).

Mozilla's not aiming to do anything remotely as invasive as that, but I still don't find "anything that can be picked up passively from public property is fair game" a very compelling ethical standard, especially for an organization like Mozilla.

[DCKing]

> I still don't find "anything that can be picked up passively from public property is fair game" a very compelling ethical standard

This is a strawman.

Any public information that can be picked up passively from public property is fair game is the real argument. Decrypting WEP, easy enough as it might be, is still unethical as the information was meant to be private. Making a database of public SSID broadcasts is completely ethical as there should be nothing private about an SSID.

[unshure]

It's not the SSIDs but the BSSIDs that end up in the database, isn't it?

[justcommenting]

you're arguing that there's a clearly defined category of broadcasted signals that can be clearly defined as public; i'm arguing that at least in ethical terms, what matters is whether the person behind the device knows and understands that their signal is leaking, where, and how that information could be used. for most people most of the time, i don't think that's the case. maybe we should agree to disagree :-)

[justcommenting]

Would you say the same thing if I set up an IMSI catcher at your home and geolocated the other radio beacons broadcasting from your home, or would that be creepy?

You might jump to say "stingrays are illegal so that's different" and in some ways, you'd be right. But it's also the case that the average user's expectations about how their wireless devices will be systematically located by third parties are better codified into law and policy in that case than in this one.

[DCKing]

I don't understand your comparison. An SSID broadcast is meant to be public information. An IMSI catcher actively exploits weaknesses of implementations to MITM non-public connections. IMSI catchers do not catch public information at all, they break into meant-to-be-private connections.

[justcommenting]

the only thing most people most of the time mean when they set up wi-fi is that they want to be able to connect their ipads and chromebooks to the internet at home.

IMSI catchers intercept signals broadcasted from radios that commonly transit across public property. my point was that we routinely consider things other than protocol specs in determining whether and when signals should be collected.

[DCKing]

> the only thing most people most of the time mean when they set up wi-fi is that they want to be able to connect their ipads and chromebooks to the internet at home.

These are not the people I'm arguing against, and I mentioned that in my first post. People should definitely be educated about the privacy consequences of their equipment. I'm arguing against people who do know that an SSID broadcast is a public radio signal they themselves transmit, and are still arguing that other parties (Google, Mozilla) should be responsible for their privacy regarding that signal instead of themselves.

> my point was that we routinely consider things other than protocol specs in determining whether and when signals should be collected.

A radio signal that is explicitly meant to be public should be public information. A radio signal that is meant to private, but can be made public by exploitation or specialized instrumentation should not be public information almost all of the time. If the meant-to-be-public signal can be collected en masse by an app such as Mozilla's, then there's really no way people should feel any expectation of privacy in this regard.

[justcommenting]

Unless Google or Mozilla affirmatively knows that a given user understands the implications of broadcasting their SSID, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that everyone still broadcasting their SSID is doing so deliberately in the informed-consent for mapping sense of the word. That doesn't make Google or Mozilla bad...I just don't think it's a reasonable assumption for organizations to make.

It's hard for me to think of ways these organizations could reliably know whether people don't mind their SSID being mapped or used for related purposes without asking them.

[paulojreis]

> I know that a lot of people are not aware of the privacy consequences, but those people are not the ones making a point out of this.

Of course they are not making a point - they are not aware. How would you expect them to make a point?

What you saying is: if they don't know enough about the subject to decide if a point should be made, then we should ignore the right to give (or not) an informed consent (because you can decide for them if the SSID is "intrinsically revealing" or not).

[DCKing]

How about we stop being so condescending, educate people to make an informed choice, and stop asking Google, Mozilla and anyone with a smartphone to think for them?

[paulojreis]

I totally agree, and that's not the issue at stake. The issue is: what should we do while people are not educated enough to make an informed decision?

Mozilla, Google (and some people in this thread) assume that it's right for them to decide if there are privacy concerns and advance with their initiatives. I don't. And they are, by marking this as opt-in, thinking for them.

[DCKing]

It's still someone's own choice to install a Wi-Fi router and powering it on. The fact that many of them don't exactly understand that it might be privacy issue (if and only if they put identifying information in the SSID) does not mean that Mozilla and Google are thinking for them. The assumption that the router owner does not mean the SSID to be public is also not warranted.

If the SSID was mandated to be identical to someone's name (or any other identifying information), I'd say the problem you describe was real. But since it the information broadcast is mostly pseudonymous, I think it's quite a small thing you are arguing. If people are including personal information in their SSID, by all means tell them!

[JackC]

Can you say more about your privacy concern here? I'm not seeing it.

As far as I know, the sole use of this database is to say, "if you can see this set of wifi networks, then you are probably at this GPS location." It's literally the same thing, except at a different electromagnetic frequency, as saying "if you can see houses with these addresses, you are probably at this GPS location." Kind of like a street map.

I definitely think that privacy concerns can emerge when you aggregate public data -- is there something I'm missing here?

[bajsejohannes]

The privacy concern as I understand it is about access points moving in time, not about the snapshot of the data at a certain point.

So you can use my access point to find your location, but if I bring it to my next home, please don't record that in public data.

[JackC]

This is a great example -- thanks.

So, is it fair to say that there's no privacy concern if the API only exposes a one-way lookup? I.e. "here are the access points I can see -- where am I?"

That also addresses the other concern raised below, that the database could be used to search for known-vulnerable routers.

[hackuser]

> is it fair to say that there's no privacy concern if the API only exposes a one-way lookup?

It helps, but no. The data is still there to use. The API or Mozilla policy may change, or security may fail.

From what I can tell, there's no need to record either the devices gathering data or the devices looking up their location. Just don't store that data and everything is fine.

[JackC]

Oh, another example that affects even the one-way lookup is stalking -- if I've been over to Joe's house before, and then he goes into hiding, I can say, "hey, I see Joe's access point, where am I?"

That could be mitigated by requiring at least two access points for a query.

[hannosch]

Both the Mozilla API as well as Google have this "you need to know two" protection. At Mozilla we go a bit further and also make sure the two BSSID's you are sending aren't almost identical. That happens in a lot of modern access points who are setup with separate 2.4 and 5GHz networks or those who have a guest network.

[paulojreis]

Your point is wrong from the beginning: I don't have to explain my privacy concerns, and neither do the others who don't know what an SSID is. "Privacy" should be the default and without need for justification, not the other way around.

[antsar]

How do you feel that privacy is being violated by scanning SSIDs and pinning those SSIDs to GPS coordinates? I believe JackC's point is that there isn't a privacy concern here. The consumer's router is blasting out the SSID for everyone to hear, just like if you were standing on your roof shouting, or had a poster on the outside of your house. There's nothing wrong with those things being recorded, what makes SSIDs different?

[publicfig]

I understand the sentiment but really feel like it falls when looking at the actual situation. It's checking on things that are broadcast outside of your own property, and even offering a way to opt out. It's like transmitting radio waves from your property and asking that no one listens. You have a control over the distribution method or whether or not it even exists.

[justcommenting]

so everyone should have to choose between having their home router's info added to large, aggregated databases and reconfiguring/not operating a router?

i know plenty of people for whom that's not a choice they're likely to know about. perhaps mozilla/google shouldn't be able to dictate my SSID or its visibility just because they don't want to incur the cost/complexity of obtaining affirmative, informed consent.

[publicfig]

Yes, everyone should have to chose that. This should be a choice to make when you are broadcasting a signal out beyond your property. This would be like arguing that your wireless network shouldn't show up in the dropdown list you see when trying to connect to a wifi network. If it's a major concern, then you always have the possibility of using ethernet, but this information is publicly available.

[justcommenting]

I understand the spirit of your comment, but the number of non-technical people, especially in cities, that even know when signals are being broadcast outside their homes is likely quite small. And it's probably almost never deliberate.

If technology perfectly reflected people's intentions for their devices, I think we'd see relatively few people deliberately broadcasting wi-fi outside of their homes intentionally and most people's SSIDs wouldn't show up on any dropdown outside their home.

I agree that this information is often available from public places, but I was getting at whose priorities should dictate whether/how the information gets collected and how it's used--people who paid for devices they may not fully understand or be able to control, or organizations that want to systematically exploit signals from them for different purposes that may be different from those of the person who owns the device?

[Someone1234]

Here's an analogy:

Everyone who travels past your home can see if the lights are on in the evening. They can also see which lights are on in the front of the house.

So I'm going to give you three scenarios and I want you to tell me when exactly it becomes a privacy issue:

1) A single person travels past your house and happens to notice which lights are on.

2) Someone travels past your house and records, on a piece of paper, which lights are on.

3) A Google car travels past your house and records, electronically, which lights are on.

Same thing with WiFi SSIDs here. It is like you standing on the roof of your home and shouting your ATM pin using a bullhorn, then complaining when someone else hears or records the information.

You want people to stop "monitoring" your SSID? Stop freaking broadcasting it at all.

[JoeAltmaier]

That solution is suboptimal. If you don't broadcast it, then properly provisioned clients have to probe for it. Which they do, on every channel. So you go from one device beaconing the SSID (your AP) to all client devices advertising it, on every channel.

[justcommenting]

I think the difference we're talking about here between #1 and #3 is that #3 makes it much easier/cheaper to (for example) predict when you'll be out of town if they want to break into your house (router)...potentially even without ever traveling past it.

Just because this information is legal to collect, doesn't mean people think a nonprofit that claims to be committed to user privacy should be moving the center of gravity closer to your third scenario.

But maybe more importantly, we're not talking about "someone else" recording the information or just a few "people" "monitoring" an SSID. We're questioning the wisdom of an organization building software to systematically collect, store, and make an SSID far more readily available to far larger numbers of people.

[unshure]

It's the BSSID that is made far more readily available, not the SSID.

[paulojreis]

Analogies are analogies because they're similar, not identical.

> You want people to stop "monitoring" your SSID? Stop freaking broadcasting it at all.

This is technocentrical BS, washing the hands to justify doing what you want.

1) Most people don't know that their SSIDs are being recorded (with position), so how do you expect them to make an informed decision? It's not like the information is readily available (I work in IT and I did not know about appending "no_map" to the SSID).

2) Everyone has a router, broadcasting the SSID. Do you really and honestly expect everyone to know how to disable it?

[Someone1234]

I don't think it is a privacy violation AT ALL. And nobody in this thread has even tried to explain why it is.

Just hand waving and "we don't have to explain ourselves, privacy is the default state!"

I gave an analogy above, you didn't even answer it. When does it become a privacy issue exactly?

[paulojreis]

> I gave an analogy above, you didn't even answer it. When does it become a privacy issue exactly?

You see, that's the problem - and that's the point. I did not answer because:

a) I don't really care about my SSID privacy. I do, however, care about other people right to know what's happening and to make informed (not implicit, by Google or Mozilla rules) decisions; and

b) I really don't (shouldn't) have to. It's not your concern when or how I feel my privacy being violated. I don't have to answer that, and it's a sad, sad society where this happens.

[untog]

But SSIDs are not private. At all. Should what the outside of your house look like be private information? How would that work? What about when I appear in the background of a photo someone took on the street?

[paulojreis]

> Should what the outside of your house look like be private information?

Everyone knows that someone can record the outside of your house; not everyone knows that SSIDs with location can (and actually are!) registered. Do you notice the difference? You can't assume that WLAN specifics are as tacit as knowing that people can look at my house!

[untog]

Even if you did explain to everyone that their SSIDs are being indexed - what would you tell them is actually being indexed? What personal information are they giving up? Your address, age, other residents of your house are already listed publicly. The name you gave your wireless network pales in comparison.

[function_seven]

You don't have to justify them, but the actual privacy-violating mechanism is worth explaining, no?

What is it about SSID-based geolocation that compromises the AP owner’s privacy?

[justcommenting]

see my other comment for a hypothetical: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8527229

through no fault of mozilla's, most home routers are ridiculously, pathetically insecure. this is not a situation that would be improved by making it easier to geolocate routers from specific vendors. if vulnerable routers become easier to find, my communications passing through that router could quickly become a lot less private. would mozilla be responsible? no. but that doesn't mean mozilla sharing my probably-vulnerable router's location wouldn't play a role in compromising my privacy.

[zz1]

I guess you have a better suggestion, and am curious to hear about it.

[paulojreis]

Of course I do. Make this "opt-in".

Using SSID naming conventions to do this is just dishonest: most of the people who will be scanned won't know what an SSID is. Even if they do, and do have the competence to change it, how many of them will know about this convention? More than this: how many "home network owners" know that their networks are being scanned and georeferenced? This opt-out scheme is ridiculous and plain "hand-washing" - they obviously don't expect people to use it.

[zz1]

"Make this "opt-in"" is a statement, not a procedure. How, and why? Would the cons outwheigh the pros?

[paulojreis]

> "Make this "opt-in"" is a statement, not a procedure. How, and why?

I don't really care about the procedure; Snailmail, if need be. Convenience is not a valid argument for breaking privacy.

> Would the cons outwheigh the pros?

The answer to this is dependent on one's stance. As you may imagine, from where I stand, they do (clearly). I can't see any "logistical inconvenience" justify breaking privacy by default.

[anonymousDan]

Why not simply require the SSID to end in _map? If Google think it's so easy for users to do, then surely this shouldn't present a problem?

[justcommenting]

the obvious option is to request consent instead of violating people's privacy and make a dragnet data collection effort like this opt-in instead of opt-out.

but that's clearly not the intention here, because how dare anyone question someone else's motives/objectives/priorities for collecting data about devices they don't own. in fact, we're supposed to think this is the "nice" version because a google-funded nonprofit is doing it instead of google doing it unlawfully with cars or through waze.

seeing mozilla move in this direction while talking about how much they respect everyone's privacy is a strategic stumble indeed.

[zz1]

Did you ever count APs during a short walk in a relatively low density neighbourhood? You have hundreds in under 100m. Tell me, how do you plan to ask each and everyone of them? Ring on every doorbell?

-Sorry, is FritzBox!239?

-No, here is YouMakeTooMuchNoiseWTF

-Oh, I see, could you please pass a message to your neighbour? I'd very much appreciate if he could please fill in this form and send it back through paper mail to Mozilla…

[justcommenting]

that would be one respectful way to do it, and yes, challenging.

but the premise of your comment is that of course my device's SSID and related location should be collected in someone else's database because a google-funded nonprofit wrote an app for people to go wardriving with.

just because SSIDs can be legally observed and collected doesn't mean i have to be happy about it. I wasn't talking about this as a technical problem as much as an ethical/political one for an organization that claims to be committed to my privacy...except when it's not.

[crankycoder1975]

Hey, we're happy to hear about privacy concerns and ways that these might be addressed.

As for collecting your SSID information - devices are already storing SSIDs to do an active scan.

If you're not happy that the Mozilla Stumbler can record that SSID, you should probably also be unhappy that all WiFi devices capable doing a probe request - which is basically all wifi devices.

As far as the ethics concern - I'll bite.

This is one of the privacy reasons why we do not publish the wifi database yet. We haven't figured out a way to do this without exposing too much personal data yet.

We've got some rough ideas on how to do this, but nothing good enough yet that we'd be willing to expose our users to this risk.

[justcommenting]

"devices are already storing SSIDs to do an active scan" - Not mine, although I would readily acknowledge that I'm in the minority and this is generally a truism.

And thank you for acknowledging privacy concerns over publishing the wifi database, although I'm personally still concerned whenever that information gets aggregated systematically, even if it's internal to Mozilla.

One way I think about privacy for data like this is respecting people's intentions. When most people set up wi-fi, I would argue that their intent is almost never to help Mozilla or Google precisely locate phones or IP addresses; it's to connect wirelessly to the internet. More to the point, it's hard to find out someone's intention without asking them. Kudos to Mozilla for getting people to wardrive consensually; but that may still not make me feel much better if I'm just someone with wi-fi.

[cpeterso]

Just to clarify, the Mozilla Stumbler apps looks at SSIDs (to filter out "_nomap" and known mobile phone and transportation networks), but the SSIDs are not reported to the Mozilla Location Service. The BSSID/MAC addresses are, though.

[Ygg2]

How is this any different than robots.txt?

I don't see your point. If you are ignorant enough to not know how to secure against such measly attempts at privacy breach, how will you secure against a more determined hacker?

Further more the SSID is publicly broadcast, so that any device you authorized can identify and connect.

[justcommenting]

i didn't say i didn't know how to secure against something like this or that it was not legal.

my point was that this approach to data collection, consent, and privacy sharply and directly contradicts claims mozilla makes to users about being committed to their privacy. i think this reflects the opposite.

maybe a better analogy would be someone from the ACLU photographing everyone they saw in public: legal and easy to defend against, but hypocritical/not cool in my opinion and it might make me question the organization's priorities.

[zz1]

Since you are underlining the provenance of Mozilla's budget, I guess that when Google stops financing Mozilla everything will change for you. Otherwise you are just lining up words to make a big impression but without any meaning or clue at all.

Don't you want everyone to observe your SSID? Hide it. You are cluttering the public's ether, so you are subject to public scrutiny. Don't you want to add "no_map" to the end of it? Shut up.

Or just do what Buckiminister Fuller told you to do: do not criticize a system but build a new and better one to obsolete the one that don't work. I promise to print your form if you start with a better approach. Unless you are not a complete idiot and understand that it is a theoretically possible way to deal with the problem but not a feasable one. Anyway, go on, just complain and talk nonsense: it will help. A lot.

[justcommenting]

i don't think i was the first or the only person to point out the similarity of this data collection program to google's street view program and related legal/policy/privacy issues that arose with it.

as engineers, we often end up offering people choices that aren't really choices. for my grandmother's ISP-provided wi-fi access point, adding no_map to her SSID isn't a choice she's prepared to make, and i don't think those are reasonable expectations for the average user.

when people suggest otherwise, i think that part of what they seem to be arguing is that the technical problem they're trying to solve--often for commercial gain--is more important than being respectful of other people. people shouldn't have to know how to hide their SSID or add "no_map" to their SSID to stay out of large databases by default.

my view is that the world is a better place when information sharing is consensual, even when it's otherwise legal to obtain that information. i think that's a better world than one in which we tell people to hide their SSIDs or add "no_map" to them. i'm interested in building software and systems that respect people and their devices.

[Touche]

Your SSID is being broadcast on public property. You have no claims of privacy there.

[justcommenting]

i never disputed the lawfulness of doing this--in fact i explicitly acknowledged it in my last comment.

i'm not making any legal claims to privacy--just pointing out that collecting everything that's lawful to collect runs counter to mozilla's policy stance of being committed to users' privacy.

[paulojreis]

> seeing mozilla move in this direction while talking about how much they respect everyone's privacy is a strategic stumble indeed.

Yup. I'm as heartbroken as I can be with a company.

A "hand-washing" attitude towards privacy from Google, Facebook or a telco is expectable. But from Mozilla? This saddens me, way more than the support of DRM in the web.

[justcommenting]

agree completely--it's one thing to do this sort of thing (it's probably legal, etc.), but to do it while claiming to be fighting for user privacy is really galling to me.

[walterbell]

An option during router setup when SSID is named? An organized promotion of this approach, e.g. list of routers that make it simple, list of services that honor it. A cool name other than "Do Not Track".

[zz1]

That would require an action on the router-side, not on the mapping one. I think it could be a good option, but this doesn't apply for this case.

Also, what if I agree to put my SSID into an open database but not in a locked one? Apple's and Google's location databases do not compare, for me, to Mozilla's one: I am more than glad to be in the latter, but not to be in the two formers.