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Old 08-12-2012, 11:52 AM  
rowan
Too lazy to set a custom title
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 17,393
Quote:
Originally Posted by SilentKnight View Post
Yeah...what was Google doing collecting that data in the first place? Kinda' makes you want to break in to a Google street view vehicle and check out the hardware they're packing.
Capturing access point SSIDs for their geolocation service. They store the SSIDs that are reachable at their car's current co-ordinates, then when a mobile device phones home with a list of SSIDs it can see in range, Google can return an approximate (and sometimes quite accurate) location.

From memory access points constantly bleat their SSIDs, so there's no need for Google's radio hardware to do anything except listen.
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