[tinus_hn]

One should realize that what they call ‘track user locations’ is actually ‘get a list of visible SSIDs’.

Should be behind a permissions check, but not the end of the world.

[stavros]

"Get a list of visible SSIDs" is exactly how phones derive your location. There's little distinction between seeing SSIDs and seeing GPS coordinates for 99.9% of the population.

[tinus_hn]

Back in the real world SSIDs are a very coarse and not very reliable way of locating devices. You are exaggerating.

[handsclean]

It’s the same thing. Listing visible SSIDs and comparing them to very comprehensive databases is the whole way precise geolocation works in many devices, like MacBooks. I think even phone navigation has GPS much less precise than you see on screen, and the extra precision is gained with this technique. Making this technique really work is a large part of the reason Google drove or walked every street in the world with their recording gig.

[umanwizard]

Visible SSIDs are absolutely used to fingerprint location.

[dmboyd]

At least in the early days, every iPhone maintained a local lookup table between ssids and gps coordinates in a SQLite database.

https://www.networkworld.com/article/752872/security-apple-o...

[ycombinatrix]

One should realize that what they call ‘track user locations’ is actually ‘receive GPS radio signals’.

Should be behind a permissions check, but not the end of the world.

lol