Mapping services on mobile devices are different. Where I lived prior to now, the location reported was almost always correct. None of my browsers actually report the correct city in which I currently live. Which is why, as I said before, browsers on my home computers report my location as being one town over from where I actually live and, at times a town 35 miles away. The ISP reports blocks of IP addresses in a general geographic location (e.g., "this computer is in this (general) geographic location based upon the IP addresses we've assigned"). This has nothing to do with Google specifically, in terms of providing a location for a non-mobile computer. (complete speculation on my part with no evidence whatsoever). I'm guessing they're using wifi connection information as a "way to track your location without asking for location permission". I have an (unsubstantiated) suspicion that this is one of the reasons so many free mobile apps seem to be adding "wifi connection information" permissions of late, at least in Android land. There are one or more big "This SSID is located here" databases and these various systems are using that. My brand new Mac was able to get a "give or take a dozen feet" fix on the Apple maps program without being signed in on any account (google, apple or otherwise) whatsoever, boot up brand new mac, create a new user ID, load maps and let it access location/wifi, and there's your street. I could be wrong but I don't believe IP address can generally be mapped to locations with much more then "city" accuracy, I don't believe they can be mapped to a particular street without directly using the ISPs internal billing/account records (but I could be wrong). If this was not your laptop, then probably the owner has turned/left that option on.īesides, as far as I know, it's not only the street view cars that collect wifi information for google, it's also the majority of android phones – so yes, wifi-based location services can be very accurate. If you find that scary (as I did), you can turn off sharing your location with your browser (at least os x gives you that option, I'm sure Win8 does, too). I'm on a macbook pro 2011, so no gps or cellular devices, and based on wifi, it get's my position quite right (house next door). When your browser then asks you if you want to use that location service, it is shared with google maps and other websites that ask for it. Just as OS X, Win8 has the ability to use WiFi to locate your rough position and share that with your browser. In fact, it's your laptop/OS that does the positioning. You can get your SSID to be exempted by adding _nomap to the end of the SSID.Īlthough, strictly speaking, I think it's not Google that triangulates your position based on wifi (how would they know what wifi-networks your laptop sees?). They can tell Google the SSIDs they see so your location can be more accurately triangulated. That's why Android phones recommend you turn on WiFi even if you're not connected to anything. I thought that's kind of scary because you would never expect your wifi connection itself should indicate your GPS coordinates, and let alone allowing company like google to know where you are based on your wifi signals.Ĭlick to expand.Your specific IP address would change but not the block that your ISP is assigned and most likely not the assignment process they use for individual areas.īeyond that: were you signed in? Have you ever been signed in from that PC or any other PC on that WiFi network? Have you ever been signed in to a Google service on a phone or tablet (with GPS obviously) from your home wifi and been signed in from the computer you were using? Lots of little ways that they can infer your "location" if you've ever allowed a Google location services application to use GLS.īeyond that Google's Street View vehicles have WiFi APs reading the SSIDs that they see and geolocate those so that they can provide their own (non GPS) enhancement to location identification. Is quite obvious that Google map has the ability to triangulate my actual location using my lap top wifi signals, inside my own home router. Somehow, google map got my location wrong, wrong by 10 miles. I don't use wifi on this PC but no GPS devices on it. Next, I tried the same google application on my PC, which has been reformatted and did a clean install of Windows 7 2 days ago. It only has wifi connection and it is connecting to my home wifi router only. This was the first time I open Google map on this laptop since this isn't my laptop. I clicked yes and, ban!!!!, it knew where I was and my actual home address.although it was off by 20ft.my next door neighbor's address instead. It asked me if I wanted to see my actual location. Here I turned on my Windows 8 Dell laptop and opened Google map. Well, this shocks me considering the Snowden scandals.
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