Aral Balkan
Wow, ok, this is freaky.
New computer. Fedora Silverblue 36. Not signed into anything. Location services is on (using Mozilla location services). I’ve been living in Ireland now for 3+ years.
I open GNOME Maps app. I grant it location access. I press the “Go to current location” button.
It goes to the exact location of the home we had in Malmö, Sweden.
What. The. Fuck?
OK, so I have no idea how that’s possible. Mozilla must have somehow cached that location but how do they know it’s me?
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@aral Does your WLAN still have the same name? Geolocation based on WLAN/Router is quite common.
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@mihira No. Other services that coillect geolocation data will ignore the _nomap. There is no defined way to *really* opt-out. It's a huge market. Similar to how "they" subverted the do-not-track option in HTTP to do exact opposite. @humanetech @aral
mihira🕊️
@humanetech @jwildeboer @aral so we need to always set our home WLAN name to end with "_nomap" to avoid that?
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@aral It just needs someone who picks up the WLAN beacon signal (not even having to connect) on an (android) phone with consent to share location and it'll add your router/WLAN with its GPS coordinates to the database. So it's not even possible to really opt-out.
Humane Tech Now
Why is it never an opt-in? 🤒
"How do I prevent my wireless access point from being collected?
Mozilla's client applications do not collect information about WiFi access points whose SSID is hidden or ends with the string "_nomap". If you would like to prevent your WiFi access point from being reported to this service, you can rename your SSID to append "_nomap" to the name (eg, SSID "MyWirelessNetwork" becomes "MyWirelessNetwork_nomap") or configure your SSID to be hidden"
Aral Balkan
@jwildeboer Same router. Unbelievable violation of privacy. So Mozilla is keeping location history tied to your router. I never consented to that. If this doesn’t violate GDPR at its core, we might as well throw GDPR in the bin.
And to think Mozilla Location Services is presented during the installation process of nearly every Linux distribution.
This is a scandal.
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@aral Details and opt-out are here: https://location.services.mozilla.com
Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅
Digital Mark λ 📚 🕹 💾 🥃
@aral MAC address of your computer or router. Last seen in Sweden, so that's where the geohash has you logged. Eventually it'll figure out you're in Ireland, either by spying on your neighbors or just driving a car around reading wifi.
Yes, this is horrifying.
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@aral so from a legal perspective everything is "fine". Your WLAN was added to the database with the consent of whatever person who happened to be close to it at some point in time. It's a weird world out there :(
Aral Balkan
@jwildeboer Opt out is a violation of GDPR.
Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:
@aral good luck with trying to convince the useless Irish data protection agency to take swift action :(
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