Google Wants to Know Where You Are

In the wake of Facebook's privacy woes, Google is now surfacing with some privacy concerns of its own. This week, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, announced that her office was launching an investigation of "Google Inc.’s inadvertent collection of data from unsecured wireless networks as its cars were photographing streetscapes for its Street View map service."

Stoddart, who joins a growing number of countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland, unhappy with Google's Wi-Fi data-harvesting practices,uses the word "inadvertent," because in a mea-culpa published in May, Google admitted to collecting publicly broadcast WiFi network names and WiFI router addresses, but says they unintentionally snagged data from open WiFi networks. 

Perhaps the patent they applied for back in January 2010 called Wireless Network-Based Location Approximation was for something else.

As writer, Pablo Escobar, points out here, the WiFi-sniffing technology turns your cell phone or laptop into a virtual GPS, which Google can use to locate you right down to your exact latitude and longitude. (the same thing can happen if you allow Google to "know your location," under the Master Advanced Features, too, by the way) Main points are:

• By measuring WiFi hotspot signal strengths, Google can create a geolocation map of transmitters.
• It wouldn't be hard to create a map of a WiFi environment.
• From there, all it would take is a simple algorithm to triangulate the hotspots and pinpoint your exact location.

If Google knows your exact location, you may benefit. For example location-based services, such as Google Maps (which now has bike trails!), are starting to crop up. As an Android smartphone user myself, I can't tell you how many times it's been useful having my phone know where I am in my new home of New York City. 

And for now, Google uses a person's location to sell more effectively tailored ads. If Google knows you are on 6th Avenue in New York City, ads may appear on your phone for businesses and restaurants in that part of town.

Eventually billboards, storefronts and even in-store displays will know you're there, too, and try to promote items or sales specifically to you. And guess who owns a patent for "Determining and/or Using Location Information in an Ad System?"

You guessed it. 

Perhaps Google should take a deep breath and reread their own privacy principles, which says that they promise to make the the collection of personal information transparent.