Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to take a conspiratorial tone.

On campus, a LOT of students (perhaps the less technically adept ones) found it very surprising that Brown claimed to know where students were. This post was aimed primarily at those students, to clarify the technical mechanisms by which Brown located students.

I tried to speculate as little as possible. The rough set of indicators Brown took is straight from the University Spokesperson — I'm mostly just trying to fill in the technical details.

As for which of these mechanisms Brown is using most, the word on campus points mostly to IP geolocation.