My phone knows my location because of GPS, and/or triangulation of multiple cell phone towers. OK, fine. But google maps on my PC just asked me to share my location, and when I did, it correctly pinpointed me on a map.
How? There is no GPS in my computer. I’m using a cable modem, and I suppose the IP address could reveal I’m served by Time Warner Cable, but I can’t believe Time Warner publishes detailed information about where every IP addresses is physically registered. (Anyway, my IP address is dynamically assigned, anyway).
Yes, it spooked me a little when I found that Google Maps somehow knew where I lived!
The technique uses wi-fi. Any wi-fi network will broadcast certain identifying information over a certain distance, such as the MAC address of the router.
A company that provides such a service has driven around the entire coverage area, listening out for people’s wi-fi signals and building a database of the identifying data, matched to location. Then, when you use such a service on your device, your software provides the network identifier, and they only have to look it up in their database to determine where you are.
Very skeptical of that theory. I live in a high-rise building in New York – pretty sure my wifi signal isn’t strong enough to be intercepted at street level. I’m way too many floors up.
Your IP address often identifies you down to a local area. In my case, browser apps often think I’m in a town that’s within a couple of miles of my actual location.
I’m using Verizon’s FIOS for my Internet access, so they’re probably picking up the location of the local Verizon substation.
Yeah it’s your IP address. That’s all it is. It won’t get down to your actual home address but it will be able to identify either your town or a nearby town.
This is what the Germans got so upset about, and Google had to stop doing it. But am I to understand that the Google Street View cars are doing it elsewhere (in the States), and are reading every WiFi signal they go by?
Yep. You can pretty easily guess the approximate location of an IP address, without even using an IP address geolocation site, by running a traceroute and looking at the router names closest to the destination. For fun, try running a traceroute on straightdope.com and see if you can guess where its server(s) is/are located (Windows users, open a cmd window and type “tracert straightdope.com”. OS X/Linux users, open a terminal window and type “traceroute straightdope.com”).
Sometimes I get identified as being in the next town over. The towns used to be distinct - like in the 19th century. Nowadays, I’m not sure where the border is, since the towns are not incorporated and they blend into each other with a mass of suburbia.
It’s not IP addresses, although I suppose they might use that data too. My current IP address locates me to within a few miles, which is pretty good for IP address-based location. Google Maps, Skyhook et al can pinpoint me to within metres.
It’s your user agent string. It contains your ISP and its location, your operating system, web browser, screen resolution/color depth and other stuff. Internet Explorer used to send the current contents of your clipboard until people started bellyaching about privacy.
This is untrue. Your user agent string contains your OS and browser + version, and that’s about it. The link you posted retrieves your location using IP address geolocation, and your screen resolution through JavaScript.
On a PC it’s primarily wifi signals. Here’s the geolocation API, which says “Common sources of location information include Global Positioning System (GPS) and location inferred from network signals such as IP address, RFID, WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses, and GSM/CDMA cell IDs, as well as user input.”
IP address doesn’t provide precise information. Some services will locate me to the correct town, others will identify a large nearby city. Getting a specific street address from the IP address pretty much requires a court order.
It’s not your wifi that’s necessarily identified by this service. Your computer can probably see many networks, which adds lots of data and triangulation. The streetview car might not have identified your network, but they’ve identified networks that are within range of your own. In your particular case, if you live on the 20th floor, you might be able to catch weak signals from the 10th floor, or even at ground level across the street. And those networks have been mapped by the street view car. Networks can also be mapped from the air, though I don’t know if that’s used by any of the commercial services.
This is interesting. I had to sudo apt-get install traceroute. What I then got was a screen full of url numbers that mean nothing to me, but would to Google.
How much does password protect on your wireless router stop? I haven’t tried to use my neighbors’ that show up as choices. I seldom see the choices. Turn on my notebook here, and it automatically logs into mine. Go to my daughter’s place and it knows their pass word too.
It wouldn’t block this sort of service. Active networks will broadcast certain information like the SSID (it’s name) and/or the MAC address (a practically unique identifier of the router). That’s how your computer can see a list of networks to connect to without needing to enter the password. Once you log in to a secure network, the actual data transfer will be encrypted, but I think that address and routing information remains unencrypted.
Even if your computer has GPS the WiFi location service is handy, since it can figure out where you are indoors and such, where the GPS signal won’t work. If you have a cell phone it can also determine where you are based on.
If your browser doesn’t ask you permission, it’s using GeoIP based on your IP address. If your browser is asking you permission, it’s based on a triangulation of the MAC addresses of nearby wireless routers.
Historically, Skyhook wireless provided this service, more recently, Google has been building up their own database via Street View and currently, it’s largely being done via iOS phones (for Apple) and Android phones (for Google). You can occasionally see glitches in the system if someone moves a wireless router to a different location. Often, when I’m at an airport, my phone will think I’m at a completely different airport.