samuri.co.uk

I’ve long since been convinced of some very dodgy going’s on when it comes to Apple’s location delving for ipod touch’s. To put it in context, if you’re using your ipod touch which has no internal GPS or 3G antenna, it’s *knows* where it is physically. Not just close neither, it’s right on the money, within a couple of metres. Now when I raise this as a concern to people they start speaking to me like I’m an idiot and start telling me about trangulation of access points.

Yes, thanks, I do have a modicum if experience in this area ta.

Actually I’ve used this sort of technology a bit in the past, I’ve watched lab setups in use where access points all controlled by the same management tools which are designed to triangulate connected and transmitting devices. Now this is in a lab, and it’s carefully controlled, and all the access points are managed by the same people and it *still* only manages to get within a couple of metres. So how do apple get some damn close when none of the access points in question are managed by them?

In their ‘skyhook’ explanations they very quickly brush this under the carpet, ‘Oh, we get people to drive round collecting AP information’. Bollocks! Your guys have driven down our street? Bollocks. Google have just completed a three year program of driving around (most) of the streets in Britain and they’ve only just got enough information to carry out these sorts of triangulations.. In fact they’re currently being told off for collecting too much information.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/21/google_halts_wifi_payload_data_deletion/

So Apple clearly haven’t gone down that path, even if they had driven round collecting AP name and MAC addresses, I’ve just changed my wireless router and I checked as soon as I turned it on, yep, they know exactly where it is. And it’s clearly not tied to internal or external IP address since the former will just be in the standard RFC 1918 range and the latter will be knowledge only availale to my ISP, all an IP whois will reveal is my ISP, not my home address.

So how are they doing it? Actually I wouldn’t put it past Google to be selling them information, that would make sense, although Google have not had this information for all that long.

Another thought I had would be that touch’s actually do have GPS technology inside but that would be silly and I’m sure someone would have worked it out by now by opening one up and looking for the appropriate chip.

There is another option. itunes has my home address. It’s got the home address of the chap across the road too because I know he has an ipod touch. My touch knows the name of my AP and it’s MAC address and it knows the physical location of my house (through simple postcode checks and quite possibly, Google information).

*Now* we have enough information to work out where my touch is to a couple of metres.

I’ll bring them down.