How Apple Wi-Fi Positioning System can be abused to track people
around the globe
SpaceX is smart on this, Cupertino and GL.iNet not so much
In-depth Academics have suggested that Apple's Wi-Fi Positioning
System (WPS) can be abused to create a global privacy nightmare.
In a paper titled, "Surveilling the Masses with Wi-Fi-Based
Positioning Systems," Erik Rye, a PhD student at the University of
Maryland (UMD) in the US, and Dave Levin, associate professor at UMD,
describe how the design of Apple's WPS facilitates mass surveillance,
even of those not using Apple devices.
"This work identifies the potential for harm to befall owners of Wi-Fi
APs (access points), particularly those among vulnerable and sensitive populations, that can be tracked using WPSes," the authors explain in
their paper [PDF].
https://www.cs.umd.edu/~dml/papers/wifi-surveillance-sp24.pdf
"The threat applies even to users that do not own devices for which
the WPSes are designed - individuals who own no Apple products, for
instance, can have their AP in Apple's WPS merely by having Apple
devices come within Wi-Fi transmission range."
Apple is one of several companies, along with Google, Skyhook, and
others, that operate a WPS. They offer client devices a way to
determine their location that's more energy efficient than using the
Global Positioning System (GPS). For mobile phones, WPS also has less
of a power drain than GPS
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The researchers say that they reported their findings to Apple,
Starlink, and GL.iNet, and note that one way to keep your BSSID out of
WPS databases is to append the string _nomap to the AP's Wi-Fi network
name, or SSID - the SSID is set by the user while the BSSID is a
hardware identifier.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/23/apple_wifi_positioning_system/?td=rt-3a
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