Hacker Read

dlikhten | karma 1143 | avg karma 3.34 · 2011-11-16 15:04:59+00:00

There's a bigger joke here. They are asking people WHO ARE ALREADY NOT KNOWLEDGEABLE ENOUGH TO ADD A WIFI ENCRYPTION to change their network SSID. I think .01% of the population will benefit.

Naturally opt-in < opt-out.

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gravitronic | karma 2518 | avg karma 5.33 · 2011-11-16 09:19:29

Encryption has nothing to do with it.

If your SSID is broadcast, without opting out they are adding the hotspot to their database.

In my neighbourhood about 95% of the AP's that broadcast SSID are encrypted, so this is a much wider group than just the open hotspots.

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robert-boehnke | karma 2947 | avg karma 19.01 · 2011-11-16 09:27:40

The people that he refers to are the ones who had their data inadvertently collected by Google due to a lack of Wifi encryption.

This is what got the whole process of adding _nomap started.

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gravitronic | karma 2518 | avg karma 5.33 · 2011-11-16 09:38:30

I don't think so. While the data collecting was one snafu that hit a smaller set of people with WIFI routers, the bigger story unveiled was that Google created a huge database of (SSID, Router MAC, location) regardless of wifi encryption.

That's why it's _nomap and not _nosniff.

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eli | karma 29331 | avg karma 3.14 · 2011-11-16 09:38:47

The issues got conflated. This whole thing came to a head when it was discovered that Google was inadvertently capturing stray packets as it drove by. Of course, Google doesn't want nor need bits of your stray data, but it became a story about reading your private messages.

The solution to not wanting to be mapped, is Google's Opt-Out procedure. The solution to not wanting other people to read your wireless data, is to properly use encryption.

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