[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.