Re: Apple changed their documentation at my request but it proves they don't care about privacy

This part of the discussion contains 3 very well thought out reflections.

1. Carlos
2. John Ribbens
3. Nuno Silva

Months ago, we wrote a python script that essentially gathered the physical location of every single unique access point BSSID in the world (see sig).

All we did was exactly reproduce the results from Levin & Rye in this paper

There were "posters" who disputed this, particularly on the Apple ngs, but it was clear they were denying only to defend the honor of their God.

They didn't understand a single thing, which is telling when someone denies research papers that no professional would deny, yet Apple posters deny it.

We were able to effectively pick any area of the world that has had an Apple mobile device swing by at some point in time and then we could locate every single BSSID/GPS location in that area, to identify, for non-apartment-style areas the home address, and then, if that router was moved to a new location, instantly, we could locate where they moved it to.

This is in keeping with what the paper claimed, and for Apple posters to deny it (which they did), is not only absurd, but telling in how desperate Apple posters tend to be when it comes to defending their religious God.

To remove doubt, Carlos is correct in his statement above, that every access point I discussed with Apple Maps executives ended with "_nomap".

Therefore, they are not "supposed" to be in the Apple world wide WPS db. And yet, they were.

None of the Apple documentation at that time said that they would be.

Only because of me (and I know this from my emails with Apple), is the cite which I provided saying that even with _nomap, you're still in their db.

Which means, if I didn't have Apple remove it manually (which they did at my insistence), then anyone could instantly track me down to the meter. were I to move my router to another location in the world (by my BSSID).

Apple knows this. They're not stupid.

They're liars. But they're not stupid.

Notice that what Jon Ribbens said is also true, and more telling than what Carlos had mentioned, although both are perfectly accurate assessments. a. The SSID has _nomap b. The SSID broadcast is hidden c. Google refuses to put that in their public WPS database d. Better yet, Google has protections on their public WPS database e. SO does Mozilla (although their database has been deprecated) f. So does everyone... g. Except Apple

Worse, Eric Rye and Dave Levin proved that once the unique BSSID is in the Apple WPS database, anyone in the entire world can track that router, down to the meter, no matter where it is subsequently moved to (and no matter what any subsequent SSID may be), which I also proved in my scripting.

Given Apple posters will stop at nothing to defend their religious God, we wasted umpteen posts proving that, but not one of them ever ran the code.

I did. I simply ran the same python code that was described in the research. And got the same results (I stopped at a fefw hundred thousand, while they went on to gather billions, or at least hundreds of millions, as I recall).

Proof of concept is all I needed to affirm that if I happen to know the BSSID of someone's router (oh, say, an ex wife or a disgruntled employer), I could track that router anywhere in the world, easily, down to the meter.

As for what Nuno Silva said, all we need to do to get our unique BSSID and GPS location into the Apple WPS database, is for an Apple mobile device to be within hearing distance, for only a moment or so, whether or not we have told Apple by the SSID postfix of _nomap, if the broadcast is set to null.

Those who actually understood what I wrote above, which is likely only about one one-hundredth of the people reading this (simply because they have bias that they can't shake), will understand the catch-22 involved.

For data collection... A. Google/Mozilla do privacy one way (i.e, the well-known correct way) B. Apple does it completely differently.

Worse (far worse), for data distribution... A. Google/Mozilla do privacy one way (i.e, with judicious controls) B. Apple does it completely differently (i.e., no controls at all!)

Think about that.

This in itself is an issue, if you have to file a request to remove the ID, that gives them another datapoint on that WLAN.

Hm, yes? If the identifier is constant and is tied to a location you're in frequently, like where you live, it can be used to track that.

And then there are people who do things like hotspots on phones to use their mobile data connection, or even portable mobile data modems with a WLAN AP.

Hahaha...

Yes, of course. You must live in that town named Theory. Like someone else said recently in another group, a lot of stuff works in theory.[1]

If anything, it's a coin toss, don't underestimate willingness to avoid having more work.

And you're doing an excellent work of conforming to the legendary figure of the "Apple fanboy". You're attacking remarks in a way that really looks like you're taking offense to somebody saying Apple did something wrong.

One would think that, ever since Steve Jobs pushed hard his bad UI ideas and ruined smartphone interaction for many, that people would have gotten used to Apple making bad decisions...

Look, I'm not saying the topic couldn't have been better explained, with less spaghetti-looking detours and more explicit statements. That it could.

Maybe that was why they asked? Are you seriously shaming somebody for asking a question?

Those two are not the same, one thing is to do a transfer from a Windows or Linux system, another thing is to initiate the transfer from the mobile device.

There's quite the irony here.

But you should also learn not to shame people for asking questions or not knowing things. That's just not acceptable.

Also see e.g.

I will respond to you only *after* you read the paper... *Surveilling the Masses with Wi-Fi-Based Positioning Systems*

Nuno Silva snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid wrote: [...]

As others have mentioned, this all has been 'discussed' umpteen times Sofar, this thread is not bringing any new information, viewpoints, <whatever>.

A summary of the previous times:

At best, a home router's BSSID is tied to a *household*, *not* to a

'Arlen' has a wife. What is the BSSID's location 'tracking'? 'Arlen'? His wife? His dog?

Case in point: I'm sometimes 18000km away from the location of my router. Quite a bit of a (location) tracking error, don't you think?

My advice/request: Let it rest. The rest of us would appreciate not seeing the same non-arguments over and over again.

The new information, in not a clear form, is that Arlen got Apple to do "something". What, is not clear, but I guess they simple removed his router from the list, so that he stops complaining to his neighbour (the one that works for Apple or has high contacts at Apple).

Hi Carlos,

Let's ignore, for the moment, how *desperate* Franklin Slootweg is to troll Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10,comp.mobile.android,alt.comp.microsoft.windows Subject: This is another request to ask Frank Slootweg to stop trolling this ng Message-ID: <117kuh5$kt1$ snipped-for-privacy@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>

Clearly, Franklin hasn't read the papers, nor the cites, nor even any of the posts in this thread, since everything he said is dead wrong...

Franklin didn't read a single word that was said in this entire thread. Not one word.

So, of course, Franklin Slootweg has no idea whatsoever of the topic here.

But you are correct that the *new* information, is super secret & so well diabolically hidden from those like Franklin that they'll never find it.

You must congratulate us on how diabolically clever we were in hiding it. Franklin Slootweg, being a troll, will _never_ find out what's new, Carlos.

But you can, can't you. HINT: *Simply L@@K at the SUBJECT of this thread for the hidden answer...*

Isn't it amazing how well we hid from Frank what's new in the SUBJECT line!

That is OT and not in evidence. I only see a single post of him in this thread, in the Android group. I don't see why you can be that angry at him.

...

It is good Usenet manners to explain the SUBJECT in the body.

You stop being stupid, Arlen. Not reading.