Most people on iOS/Android are rudely allowing global tracking of you (not me - but you)

Most people on iOS/Android are rudely allowing global tracking of you. Note this is two different things: a. Most people are rudely contributing to the tracking databases b. Most people are rudely being tracked by the tracking databases

Note specifically that I'm intelligent & well informed & not rude. a. Hence, I am NOT contributing to the tracking databases b. And I am NOT being tracked by the tracking databases

But you are.

See references below: Outlets like The Register and Cybersecurity News reported that Apple's WPS could be abused to track people around the globe by tying their home routers' BSSIDs to precise GPS coordinates.

While the published work focused on Apple's system, Google's operates on the same principle as Android devices upload BSSIDs + GPS coordinates, so the same vulnerabilities apply.

I repeat for effect: Your BSSID is you (by name even) & address. If you take your router or bluetooth devices with you, they followed.

Note the references below where the "good guys" proved how unprotected Apple's system is, but they said, by extension, Google's system is similar.

Apple's Wi-Fi Positioning System abuse (2024, University of Maryland) Researchers showed that Apple's crowdsourced Wi-Fi database could be exploited to track Wi-Fi access points and their owners globally. By querying the system, they amassed a worldwide snapshot of BSSID geolocations in just days, proving that an attacker could surveil households at scale.

"Surveilling the Masses with Wi-Fi-Based Positioning Systems" (2024, University of Maryland) This academic paper demonstrated that Wi-Fi positioning systems can be abused to create a global privacy threat. They showed how an unprivileged attacker could harvest millions of BSSID-location pairs and use them to track movements or identify households

Specifically:

1. Researchers Erik Rye and Dave Levin demonstrated that Apple's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) could be queried at scale to harvest hundreds of millions of BSSID-location pairs worldwide. 2. They showed that an attacker could map and track Wi-Fi access points globally, even if the owners never used Apple devices themselves. 3. The paper explicitly warns that this enables mass surveillance of households, since each BSSID is tied to a fixed home location.

Deanonymization research (NDSS Symposium, 2021) Work presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium showed how device identities can be deanonymized via side-channel attacks on wireless protocols, including Wi-Fi. While not focused solely on Google's database, it highlighted how BSSIDs can be leveraged to track and identify users

Researcher Erik Rye presented how he was able to map hundreds of millions of access points in days using Apple's API, without needing special privileges.

This proved that the system could be exploited by anyone with developer access to Apple's geolocation services.

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