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Comment by cschneid | Hacker News Reader

How does google know where MAC addresses are? I thought that they were non-routable, so they are limited to the extremely local connection. Presumably the range from your computer to the termination of the cable modem on the other end.

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It's the MAC or your wireless router. They collected them with their street view cars.

There was a big, overblown privacy scare some months ago because it was discovered that the cars also accidentally saved some stray unencrypted packets of traffic as they cruised around.

Actually, there are third-party services that have made a business of collecting locations of Wi-Fi routers and I believe Google subscribes to them.

I didn't know you could (legally) earn money for wardriving.

It's just 21st century map-making. Instead of plotting the location of physical landmarks, you'd be plotting electromagnetic landmarks.

I'm sure pioneer map-makers got in trouble for plotting perfectly visible stuff that was located on private property.

Yes, it's significant to note that Google (à la Street View scanning) is not the only party that's made a concerted effort to collect them. Whether Google's purchased (or absorbed) such data from others, I don't know.

I speculate that further routes for collection may be available. E.g. a user uses a wi-fi connection with a device that has geo-location turned on, and "Bob's your uncle".

They used to, but now do it themselves and then keep the database up to date with Android phones. This is why Skyhook is upset and suing:

http://gigaom.com/2010/09/15/skyhook-sues-google-in-a-locati...

well, the same is true for Apple who are now collecting location/wireless footprint themselves with iOS devices without Skyhook.

It relies on the fact that the router web admin page is unsecured and someone hasn't changed the default password. I'm pretty certain this could also work on linksys:linksys or admin:password default login routers.

So if you don't want to be hacked, change your password.

you don't even need the password. Some routers display it on the admin page before login in (dd-wrt does this).

That behavior can easily be toggled on/off in the Administration->Management section for your DD-WRT router. Take a look at "Info Site Password Protection" and "Info Site MAC Masking" on that page.

At least for me, dd-wrt only displays it for connections coming from "inside".

For connections coming from outside it forwards it to the DMZ computer, or blocks it.

I think that the google street view cars also log the wifi networks they find.

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