Google "Secure Access" FAQ + Download link

Google Secure Access (Beta): Frequently Asked Questions

What is Google Secure Access?

Google Secure Access is a downloadable client application that allows users to establish a more secure WiFi connection.

Why would I want to download and install Google Secure Access?

Google Secure Access allows you to establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi. By using Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted, preventing others from viewing the information you transmit.

Does Google Secure Access connect to a VPN server?

Yes, Google Secure Access connects to Google's VPN ("Virtual Private Network") server provided for this service.

Why did Google develop Google Secure Access?

One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor.

What sort of information does Google have access to?

If you choose to use Google Secure Access, your internet traffic will be encrypted and sent through Google's servers to the Internet. The data that is received will then be encrypted and sent back through our servers to your computer. Your privacy is important to us, we strongly encourage you to read our Privacy Policy to be fully informed about how your privacy is protected.

Is there a fee for using Google Secure Access?

No, Google Secure Access is free.

Where can I go to download Google Secure Access?

The program can currently be downloaded at certain Google WiFi locations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When I install Google Secure Access, why does it ask if I also want to install the Google Toolbar?

We've included the option to install the Google Toolbar because it improves your browsing experience.

Can I uninstall Google Secure Access?

Yes. You can uninstall Google Secure Access by simply running the Uninstall program. This can be found by clicking on Start Menu, Programs, Google Secure Access, and then choosing Uninstall.

How do I make my connection even more secure?

You can make your connection even more secure by using a software firewall. Windows XP users with Service Pack 2 can find it by clicking on Start, Control Panel, and then choosing Windows Firewall.

Will my corporate VPN still work?

Yes. You can connect to your corporate VPN while running Google Secure Access.

I have configured Google Secure Access to connect automatically, but it's not working. What's going on?

Certain wireless LAN management utilities and older wireless LAN adapter drivers prevent Google Secure Access from detecting that you're connected to the Google WiFi network. In this case it will not connect automatically, and you should connect manually to ensure the privacy and security of your network traffic.

Will Google Secure Access work at other locations?

While Google Secure Access should work, we have not tested it at other locations.

Why is Google Secure Access a beta product?

Google Secure Access is a new product that is only available at certain locations in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are constantly working to improve this product.

link to installer :

formatting link

Reply to
frankdowling1
Loading thread data ...

It's about Joe Coffee browsing at hot spots and coffee shops. Google wi-fi secure access currently only works at two hot spots in the San Francisco Bay area. Kapp's Pizza Bar and Grill and one at Airborne Gymnastics. I note that you're in UK. Wait your turn.

Amazing. Could you explain how they might do that with a local VPN client and server at a remote hot spot? I haven't seen the server end but methinks it would be difficult without a rather elaborate data collector at the hot spot end.

The client will probably remain free. The server will probably either cost money, or throw advertising in your face to pay the bills. I'm guessing, but I would like to point out that almost all of the beta stuff offered by Google on the client side has been free and remains free.

They already have access. The traffic between the client and the wi-fi hot spot will be encrypted by the VPN. The traffic between the hot spot and the ISP is not and could be sniffed by law enforcement agencies.

Why not? If you're doing porno downloads or spamming at a wireless hot spot, I'm sure it might induce you to clean up your act.

I don't think so, but you're entitled to your paranoia. Methinks you might be over-reacting.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Think this is about Joe Bloggs in the street ? Nahh.... Methinks what Google are trying to do is offer a facility to the Corps to allow their wireless workers to Net connect encrypted. Mass-market data collection exercise.

1-How long will it be before they start charging for it (assuming it's succesful enough) ?? 2-How long will it be before the FBI/US Govt want to have access to any encypted transmitted data. 3-Why the hell should I give Google access to my Net traffic just so they can do stats monitoring etc... ?

Call this innovation ? More like a Corp control exercise. Screw em'...

S
Reply to
Steve Berry

Inline...

Yeah now it is, what about in 2/3 years time ? BTW who do you define Joe Bloggs as being ? To me he's anyone and everyone from the lone surfer to the Corp CIO. Who says hot spots will be limited to Coffee Shops ? Google could (theoretically) set em' up wherever they God Damn please. In theory what's to stop them scaling up "hot-spots" to "large-scale hot spots" - then they can target companies/employees using wireless networks. What's to stop them ? - not a lot assuming they've got the financial resources to do so.

Gimme' a break. Do you doubt Google could currently afford that if they wished ? Just because they haven't implemented it yet doesn't mean to say they're not giving themselves the means to do so. This is about nothing more than creating a "catch-net". No doubt MS will follow-suit. Thanks but if I want my wireless data encrypted I'll choose to do it through the company I'm employed by. How the hell can you or anyone else know what Google will do (or be asked to do) with that data ? Sure offer the service if you wish, just don't expect everyone to jump on it.

Missing the point. Whether it's free or not now isn't the point. At some point in the future if this is a success, someone within Google will be sitting there saying "Hmm.. Over a X year period, we've had X amount of people using that service, and we've got all this lovely data". Why don't we charge em' for it ? Even that is secondary to the fact that as an individual, you're reliqushing control to a Corp. Thanks but no thanks. What they're trying to do is no better than what MS have done over the years. All about control and very little else. Kinda' boring actually.

Or anyone else ???

That's funny. Mr Porn merchant wants his daily dose of p*rn and the only way to get it is a daily trip down to Starbucks !! Can just imagine the trail of Net Users with holes cut in their newspapers so no-one will recognise em' ! If I were that type do you think I'd actually be worried about what data I'm downloading anyway ?

Hmm..don't think so. Just the same old story - companies wanting control of infrastructure/data paths (& associated data). That said, some will probably find it useful, but I'll be giving it a permanent body-swerve.

Rgds, S

Reply to
Steve Berry

Google's motto is "Do No Evil". From friends that are employed by Google, I find that they take this seriously. If the same announcement had been made by SBC or one of the cellular companies, I would be VERY suspicious and paranoid. I have to make a few value judgements in my lifetime, and would say that Google can generally be trusted to do the right thing.

My average user is called Joe SixPack for the home user and Joe Coffee for the coffee shop seat warmer. These are generally in reference to users with minimal computer expertise. I do have average and median demographics and statistics on their internet use habits and features used, but can't really leak them without breaking NDA's.

Yep. That covers everyone except the geeks, hackers, students, and spammers.

Good point. There are also airports, bus stations, hotels, restraunts, railway stations, parks, and public buildings. Of course most of these alreay have for pay wi-fi so there may be some difficulties with the owners considering Google a revenue loss.

I know a bit about site aquisition and managment and can assure you that this is not the case. Business's know money when they smell it and would not miss a chance to charge for the access point. Municipal government want contracts and permits. Businesses with existing commerical arrangements might find free to be bad business.

Not much to stop them except lack of demand. The most vocal demand for free wi-fi are home users in nearby apartments and offices that want free internet rather than paying an ISP for DSL or cable. Opinions as to the viability of such a system occupied by non-customers varies somewhat from abuse to a great deal. If Google offered free wireless internet, with no restrictions beyond the usual bandwidth limiting, in trade for some ads, non-intrusive statistics, and some light monitoring, would you go for it? I know quite a few that would.

Nice way to avoid the question. I didn't ask they could afford to do it. I asked precisely how they would impliment such a spy system? Hint: Have you ever tried to sniff gigabit ethernet? Think of it as drinking from a fire hose.

If you have any proof that they're sniffing, I would be very interested in hearing it. Otherwise, please confine you accusations and predictions of abuse to reality. Do you have any past evidence that Google has done anything even close to what you're suggesting?

Pardon my ignorance but what's that?

Nope. Microsoft never follows. They just buy the leading company.

That's fair. It's possible that the Google VPN client has some back doors and security issues. However, I'm fairly sure that these have been checked by security professionals. Given time, they may chose to hvae it certified by an independent lab. If Google is really nice, they might allow their VPN termination server to accept other clients such as the Cisco VPN client or SafeNet client. Would that make you happy?

Well, they are required by law to disclose their security policies. Also, you could just ask them what they are collecting and how it's used. Start here:

formatting link

I'm not offering any service. Like everything else, new ideas require some risk. Personally, I don't think offering anything for free has any manner of long term viability, but it does sound nice.

Not too bad a conspiracy theory. If you don't mind, I don't want to argue with you about this level of speculation.

Why would any *COMPANY* find it necessary to do something so invasive and stupid? I can see the various law enforcement acronyms doing such things. They don't know any better. However, a company is responsible to its owners and stockholders. If any company were caught sniffing, say goodby to their reputation. I don't know any company that would risk that, especially the big ones that have the most to lose.

Not until your caught and get kicked off the system. I sometimes get to play enforcer on some hot-spot system and a WISP. That's the standard line. Frankly, I don't care what they look at or download. I only care about the quantity. One Bitorrent user can hog the entire system. I don't care if he's downloading movies, cd images, or porno, he's history if I catch him.

As I mentioned. You are entitled to your own level of paranoia.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I don't have much time to debate this stuff, so I'll limit my comments to direct questions.

Yes. I already do that with various ISP's, hosting services, cellular providers, and telco service providers I deal with. When you're in business there's an assumption of trust that has to be there or nothing ever happens. The Japanese have developed this to a fine art in that they will not do business with anyone they even suspect is potentially untrustworthy. I've been running my own businesses long enough to know that it's much easier and better to treat ones customers and vendors as trustworthy, than to initiate some type of adversary action. I tend to trust everyone and treat them accordingly. Yeah, I get burned on occasion, but the greatest majority of the people I deal with a honest and trustworthy. I think Google qualifies.

Well, I can only guess as to why their stockholders want Google to make money. Perhaps it's because they expect a return on their investment?

Most ISP's generate statistics on their overall customers traffic usage and patterns. This is commonly deemed acceptable. It only becomes an issue the traffic and use patterns are traceable to individually identifiable customers.

Incidentally, Google currently sells keyword lookup use patterns, click thru counts, and statistics to their advertisers. How else could one know which search terms to "buy" and how effective the advertising. However, none of these are traceable to individual users.

The could use the Yahoo and Hotmail examples and only charge for premium service. I think a better example will be Microsloth Anti-Spyware Beta 1. Currently it's free until the end of the year. Nobody knows if they're going to charge for it. Tradition has it that once something is free, chargeing for the same thing results in massive user alienation and eventual collapse of the marketing plan. Let's see if MS is going to charge for their Anti-Spyware service.

No, I asked a rhetorical question because I knew that if you thought about it, you would see the problem with Google sniffing traffic. There's just too much of it. It's also somewhat tricky with gigabit. I'll spare you the details because I'm a bit busy today. If you want some real entertainment, try sniffing a single session extracted from a multiplexed fiber link. Unfortunately, there are commercial products designed to do exactly that, so we can assume that someone is sniffing telco mux traffic. Probably our trustworthy government fighting terrorism or something.

Of course not. I expect the volume of traffic and ubiquitous encryption to make it even more difficult for Google to sniff your traffic.

I'll keep it short. MS has tired to get out of the product biz and go into the service business many times. MSN is the closest approximation to a successful attempt. They've tried to turn their software business into a rental business. Almost everything they seem to be planning is drifting in the ASP (applications service provider) direction despite massive resistance from the customer base. When you think of such services as large database cartography, think of it in terms of what direction MS is trying to move the customers.

Then post a question on their weblog asking exactly what they plan to do with all the information they may or may not be gathering via their VPN client or server. Go directly to the source and see if they can answer your concerns.

One of my sidelines was reviewing business plans. Most sounded like science fiction. The really entertaining ones were those that plan to make money by giving something away. It's kinda difficult to eat "market share". Since the dot com meltdown, most of the free everything plans are gone.

Sorry. I have no idea what you're talking about. Almost every company that could gather statistics in the past have attempted to do so. That was when the acceptable limits of such behavior had not been established. The music players were logging what songs you played or downloaded. Web portals were collecting URL's viewed. MS was collecting installed software lists. Ad nausium. Most of these companies still do that with one difference. The data is no longer traceable to individual users. Is that acceptable to you?

Oh that. That's called espionage and is far more common than you would expect. Much of my early education in telco practices came from fishing BSP's (Bell System Practices) out of the dumpter at telco training offices. Some of my best souse code finds came from dumpster diving. I fail to see the connection between such practices and your suggestion of Google's potential breaches of privacy.

Sorry. I guess you can't trust me because I do dumpster diving. Might as well add that the first thing I did on a new design was reverse engineer the competitions. Of course prying information during interviews from employees of competitors was unethical. Hanging around a Silicon Valley bar (and I'm a non-drinker) just to pry rumors from the competition is also unethical. Of course, trading customers should be banned or made illegal. Surely, I'm more evil than a mere dumpster diver.

Hint: I you ever decide to go into business for yourself, you'll probably find yourself doing many things that are marginal. It's a constant problem and bugs me as I don't have any built in sense of ethics. I learned mine by working for companies of various sizes and paying attention to how and why they do such things. If you expect everyone in business to be squeaky clean and ethical, you're in for a rude suprise. Some are more ethical than others and I consider Google to be among the best.

Great. None of the local ISP's offer VPN termination services to non-commerical customers. But, you want end to end so that would required that all server farms switch to accepting only SSL secured web browsing. Not this week.

The immediate problem is the wireless link. It's just too easy to sniff or spoof. The minimal solution is to encrypt just the wireless part of the puzzle. That's good enough for the casual user. You can solve the security problems of the internet another time.

Oh, the responsibility. I have to justify my actions when the irate customer calls up and complains, or when the hot spot refers them to me. I blocked a laptop user at a local hot spot last week because he had an active spam bot running on his laptop. The bozo called me at home and demanded to know why I had the "right" to block him. He knew about the spam bot and was going to do something about it when he got to work, but needed to do something on the internet first. I asked for the name of his employer and he hung up on me. Fortunately, that only happens about every other month so it doesn't bug me much. Try some power or responsibility some day. You probably won't like it.

Fine. What have you seen Google doing that offends you? There have been some pissing matches with the Scientology mob and battles with hit counter enhancing utility vendors. Same with tricky web pages intended only to be first on the searches. However, I don't recall anything that would constitute a breach of trust by Google. What did they do to make you not trust them?

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Hmm....You're asking users to take alot on face value/show leaps of faith in Google. As you may have guessed, I'm not so trusting, not of Google in particular ( search engine is obviously excellent & Google Earth as a product is absolutely fantastic etc.. ), I'm just suspicious of what Google *could* do with that data. The scenario they've put in place potentially gives em' an awful lot of power. Yeah, that does scare me !

Therein lies the point - not so much what Google are setting up, but why are they doing it ? I mentioned previously about mass-market data collection, what is statistical study if it doesn't involve mass-market data collection ? I'm still more concerned about what Google will do with that data. I'm speculating here, but I can see scenarios where they could easily sell statistical analyses of users habits to third-party companies. It's potentially mind-blowing what else they could do with that data. Yeah, I'm still scared !

I never said free. You're right about Business needs though. If the SF instance shows potential as a revenue source, which could be scaled, I doubt they'll refuse to look at it.

Depends on what I want to use it for - casual browsing - perhaps, business needs where securing data paths is a concern - forget it. Typically most businesses implement free access initially to try and create a user-base/judge the potential viability of a service - then at some point, they'll "change the ballpark"/ possibly charge for it - Hotmail for example ? Do you think if GMail was the only existing Web-based mail reader, Google wouldn't be tempted to charge for it ? The larger the user-base, the more the argument to charge for it comes into effect.

I avoided it because frankly I don't know, as you've probably guessed ! However, I do think to ignore the possibility ( in arguably what is the most creative industry the World has seen ) doesn't follow history. This industry has shown time and time again that if something doesn't exist and there is a potential need for it/resources to implement it, it will tend to get created. Maybe I'm "crystal-ball" gazing here, but the core fact of the matter is the potential level of control Google are attempting to give themselves with this is staggering.

I didn't ask they could afford to do

You asked that because you probably know I couldn't answer it. Do you think the same set of circumstances will exist in 5/10 years time ?

I never accused them of anything ( other than trying to control data paths -which is exactly what they're doing ). So what you're saying is just because I've never had a drink in my life, I'm never going to have one ? If I send a letter snail-mail I expect the postal service to deliver it. Sure they can conduct all the statistical analyses on how many mails are sent by district, what colour stamps are used or whatever, but that doesn't give them the right to analyse what I've wriiten about or who I'm writing to - that's MY business. When I browse. I browse for me not to be a result of a stats collection by a third-party. The bottom line is as a user, you're potentially losing control. Ultimately that's what I don't like.

Sorry - See the ref to user-base above.

Or the second-leading (Connectix for example when VMWare told em' to get stuffed). You're telling me MSs attempts at a Search Engine/Virtual Earth aren't attenpts to follow/compete with Google then ?

No because Google still control it. I don't have an issue with the service at all. I do have an issue with data collection.Offer the service and say we'll not monitor anything other than System Performance issues and I'd be happy.The whole principle of data collection and its potential uses is just one I strongly object to. That's just my opinion though.

I'm not interested in what they're collecting now - that's potentially a constantly moving playing field anyway. I am interested in why they're collecting it ?

Very true. If everything in life was free, we'd all be poor though I guess.

OkeyDokey. That's what happens when I watch the X-Files too much.

What about the "Garbage bin" sniffing by both MS and Oracle in the past ? Huge Corps- makng lots and lots of money resorting to "dumpster-diving" I believe you guys call it and paying third-parties to do the dirty work for em'. When you see Corps acting like that is it any wonder the individual perspective is "Why should I trust them when that's what they get up to ?" Besides, the service is either securable end-to-end or it isn't. If an individual could potentially sniff-it he/she could easily pass the results to a third-party ( who's probably paying them to do so ). I'll always find that issue about "trust" is the key one. All the technology/ideas floating around and we still come back to that same old issue about human-trust. Tough-nut to crack.

Oohhh the power !

Thanks for that - I've seen too much not to necessarily trust what I look at.

Rgds, S

Reply to
Steve Berry

I hope they do. The Japanese ethic is spot-on, but that trust element is arguably the toughest to hold on to. I guess that's one reason why the suicide rate in Japan is always so high. Trust means different things to different people and if you get burned once too many times, it can lead to you seroiusly questioning the very reason why you do what you do. Meaning of life n' all that.

Perhaps.

Well it ain't theirs exactly. Sorry that's wrong - it is theirs now. The usual product rebadging exercise.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least.Unofortunately I don't currently have access to that kit at home. Got a toaster though ?

Betya' sniffing technology will have come on leaps and bounds though. Take with pinch of salt.

Yeah, I know they've been going on about the software as a service model for years for fairly obvious reasons.

May do. If I ask them I expect they can only answer in respect of current projections. No one really knows what the future holds. I guess Google are in the same boat as the rest of us.

The Chinese Govt do like Opensource, which is still free last time I looked though. I guess that's more an anti-MS statement than anything else.Getting Linux is a bit like getting a car with no petrol (sorry gas). Until someone puts some gas in it, it ain't going nowhere.

True but MSs recent WPA does log more machine details than I care to see. They aren't naming the user, but they are naming location/IP/installed OS/certain hardware items PID etc..., which is arguably more valuable than user info anyway..Just MS playing the numbers game again.

I can easily "expect" how common it is.

Much of my early education in telco practices came from

Behavioural pattern. To me the practice of "dumpster-diving" is completely unethical and only exists because those that choose to do it can get away with it. Ok, so that's gone on probably in one form or another since the beginning of time, but it still stinks. Nobody ever hear of shredders in Silicon Valley ?

I'm guessing you don't need to do it anymore ?? As before doing the diving isn't really the issue, it's what you do with what you find that's probably more important. Some elements of Silicon Valley behavour shall we say I'd rather steer clear of.

No you're just a product of the modern-age ;) As Client Eastwood once said "Every man's got to know his limitations". For some they just stretch further than others.

We finally get down to it. One man's pleasure is another man's poison. Don't think my career's been as varied as yours, but I have dealt with those I wouldn't rather have dealt with. I learned I'm not the success at all costs type even though what I've seen has probably been produced by those of that "Vintage" shall we say. Corny as it sounds I value my soul ! I've got no wish to be reincarnated as Steve "Developers..developers..developers..." Ballmer. What the **** are you going on about Mr Sweaty ?

That's fine. I'll just avoid it then.

If the user doen't give a stuff about where it's going then yeah that's ok.

I did and you're right I didn't. When people start to realise the truth of the information age it ain't a pretty sight. Started to realise that years ago when I got involved with some Compuware products - and I thought "Jeez - this stuff's awesome"..So much potential and alot of dev work going into products that most will never hear about. Ok so even they nicked (sorry acquired) the flexlm licensing componants from Globetrotter at the time, but hey welcome to Corp land. Unfortunately I was working with a manager at the time. You know the type "My Boss likes me cos' I get stuff done" blah..blah... and we go out for drinkies etc.. Oh yeah ? What just you ? On the backs of others ? What you talking about here ? Needless to say, I left, guy was a (control) twat. What they needed to get done was never going to get done - frankly the talent/incentive just wasn't there. Oh well, c'est la vie. Another potential promising career bites the dust before it even starts !

Absolutely nothing ( the more MS employees they can nick (minus the court cases) the better, but dump the MS practices before you go and get back to being genuine people eh ?? ) I've just got this niggle with giving control to Corps when I don't have any clear visibility as to what they're going to do with it. Bugs me no-end. I'm still sitting here thinking Google, Where are you really going with this ???

Anywayz, many thanks for the input Jeff, it was educational to say the least.

Rgds, S

Reply to
Steve Berry

As a free alternative I use iPig with good success (even so it still seems to be in beta) The software

formatting link
includes the option to set up your *own* VPN server extremly easy. Thus all traffic goes to your computer and not via the Google machines!

Reply to
WifiFan

Can you offer any other reason why people invest in Google?

I beg to differ. Features, functions, and bandwidth consumption are growing almost exponentially. At best, diagnostics, bug fixes, and usability are growing linearly and are well behind the curve. I see nothing that will change this. When you get gigabit fiber to the home handling ALL your communications services, it will be even more difficult to troubleshoot and sniff.

No one knows for sure, but there are plenty of people that get paid substantial amounts of money (like me) to calculate and guess what's going to happen, what disruptive technologies are going to emerge, and what political influence is going to appear. Very few of these people operate in a vacuum as you seem to be doing. They ask, they listen, the analyze, and they sometimes guess. You might try asking Google before you start guessing.

Incidentally, Google Wi-Fi privacy policy:

formatting link

China has never had much interest in paying software licenses. Most modern software sends tokens via the internet back to the mother ship when someone fires up the software. I have access to some of the statistics for a few products. I think China is the current leader in running cracked or stolen software.

I would love to debate the merits of Open Source versus the software license models. However, that has little to do with Google Wi-Fi and your evaluation of their privacy issues.

Hint: Every document you create with MS Office is tagged with machine details including the SID and MAC address. That's how they found the author of the Melissa worm.

Oh, but they are. See: |

formatting link
try the "Locate Me" Active-X control. You'll find that it's amazingly accurate. Also, how about MS Location Finder for Wi-Fi? |
formatting link

Perhaps some products? |

formatting link
|
formatting link
For Wi-Fi, I've been working with RFC3825 services for VoIP E911 location: |
formatting link
There was also a web site that would give your IP address, but also quite a bit of information that it could suck out of your browser. I can't seem to remember the URL. You want anonymity and privacy? Good luck.

That's fine. The moral high ground is always best and easy to take. Let me know when you have a family to feed, bills to pay, and a bunch of employees that depend on you. Methinks the moral high ground is a suitable and lofty goal, but which tends to fail badly when faced with the necessities of doing business.

The dividing line between ethical behavior and acting like evil rotten scum is rather poorly defined. For example, what the difference between a bribe and a commission? Answer... when its paid. Otherwise they're the same. In many cultures (i.e. middle east), only a fool takes a commission. Why would you want to risk your profits by getting paid after the deal is done? It's more than a behavior pattern. It's an ethical and cultural exercise that varies radically in different parts of the world. The limits of ethical behavior also vary depending on the participants. What's unethical for you and me may not be a great idea for a politician or public personality. Martha Stuart comes to mind.

Correct. I'm 57 years old and find it a bit undignified to do my own dumpster diving. Smelling like stale pizza ruins my image. So, I just interrogate vendors, consultants, former employees, and sometimes hire investigators (financial researchers).

Really? We're back to ethics again. Do you consider it ethical for an organization (government or private) to violate privacy laws, perform illegal evidence collection, and to engage in wiretap-like activities, if the collective evidence will not be used in court? That's the current trend in the US.

What I do with my dumper diving and "research" is almost certain to be used in some way to benefit me and clients. Why else would I bother to do my "research"? I'm not dumb enough to publish memos on the internet, but the contents are certainly useful.

formatting link

I'll resist the temptation to disparage UK behavior.

Amazing. In an email message, I was just accused of being a throwback from another generation and too old to be even capable of understanding modern youth. Thanks for the reassurances that I'm not totally obsolete and useless.

My "Learn By Destroying" is a way of finding those limitations. The trick is to do it without creating a problem or getting caught. Every

5 year old will try to push his parents as far as possible to define those limits. Once established, the kids will push beyond just to see if the limits have moved. In business, we call that "test marketing".

Interesting. You cover quite a bit of ground in one paragraph. I won't argue with you about your perspective on the world. My only complaint is that you have apparently labeled Google's entry into the Wi-Fi market as some type of potential privacy invasion, without the slightest evidence, history, or logic. Just pure paranoia. Fix that and you'll probably do fine. What you do with your soul is a religious issue and not within my areas of expertise. It's also not my place to pass judgment on Steve Ballmer. I have had some dealings with MS (under John Shirley) in the distant past and do my best to avoid them, which is not easy. |

formatting link
|
formatting link

The user should not need to care about what path their packets follow. I doubt that most people could do a proper forward and reverse traceroute (yes, they're different) on their packets to determine the path. Even so, without source routing, there's little control and traceroute returns can be spoofed.

One of my better one liners is: If you have to think about security, then it's not secure. That means if you have to type in a password, it can be borrowed. If you have to configure something, then it can be done wrong. If you have to tinker with a X.509 dongle, then it can be stolen. If you have to bring your own security (i.e. VPN), then the rest of the system can be compromised.

Security should be inherent, built-in, part of the puzzle, and NOT require user participation. Google's VPN is a step in the right direction but not a total answer. Don't fault them for not being able to fix the security problems of the internet.

In every generation since the ancient Greeks started scribbling them down, there have been prophets of doom and destruction predicting that the present course of events will lead to the demise of civilization as we know it. For some unknown reason, these predictions never seem to come true in their original form.

I'm lost. What does your problems in dealing with corporate mismanagement and marginal managers have to do with Google Wi-Fi and business ethics? Your manager didn't set company policy. He probably didn't interface with customers. He didn't make the decisions as to whether your product would see the light of day or die in the lab. I've survived similar horror stories, where I busted my ass for products that were killed immediately after announcement. I was devastated but I took the time to bug management about why they did such a stupid thing. After slogging through the diplomatic baloney, the reason turned out to be quite sound based on the competitive situation and the financial requirements. Those simple questions and the interest to know the basis for such decisions is what got me out of the lab and into management. I suspect you've never managed a complex project with prima donnas and a demanding upper management. You should try it some time.

Thank you. So, you have no historical basis for assuming that Google will precipitate a privacy violation using their Wi-Fi service.

This is about Google, not Microsoft. Nobody has ever suggested that Google is following or should follow MS business practices.

That explains quite a bit. You don't like taking orders without understanding and approving of everything involved including the implications. That's admirable but impractical. No corporation is going to disclose their corporate strategy (assuming they actually have one) to employees. The best you can do is try to guess which is what rumors are for. Also, you didn't "give control" to the corporate executives. The stockholders did that by electing the Board of Directors. Methinks you might want to limit your expectations and reduce your involvement into areas that you at least have some control over. Your former boss, the "control freak", and you have much in common.

I have no idea. I do not have an agenda to push. I suspect you and other readers might benefit from the discussion. I wouldn't spend the time if thought it would be wasted. I've tried to answer some of your questions and largely satisfied my curiosity as to why you seem to suspect that Google is evil despite evidence to the contrary. I also find it fascinating to see how other people think and how their logic operates.

Ye're welcome, good luck, but I gotta get to work now....

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Interesting - thanks.

S
Reply to
Steve Berry

This works via some database that may be a tightly held secret by Microsoft. I've read some about how certain locators "guess" at a location based on the zip codes used for searches out of that IP address, but the MS Location Finder hits a WAP near me squarely on the map, and it's not a public WAP. I might have to ask them if they voluntarily participate in some MS scheme.

Okay... this is cute:

formatting link

Spot on.

Within 10-20 miles, probably some defined ISP location for my IP block.

Huh? Headquarters for the ISP, maybe?

That looks good. Maybe what Microsoft is using, but that requires a DHCP server that has these fields available for definition, and that responds to someone's request for the information. Do you know of any? Do you know how MS Locator does its lookups?

Reply to
dold

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.