[PLUG] Geolocation in HTML

[Daniel Pittman]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 09:20, Michael <michael at jamhome.us> wrote:
> Daniel Pittman wrote:
>> On Jan 10, 2011 6:27 AM, "Michael Rasmussen" <michael at jamhome.us> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm reading Dive into HTML5 http://diveintohtml5.org/
>>>
>>> There's a chapter on HTML5 features including Geolocation.
>>> Clicking through the test link Firefox pops up a warning "website wants
>>> Geolocation.  Tell them?" kinda thing.
>>>
>>> I click yes and a Google map showing my exact location pops up.
>>> Repeat with Chrome, same results including getting my permission first.
>>> Konqueror doesn't support the feature.
>>>
>>> This raises two questions:
>>>
>>> How?  I'm doing my web browing through my laptop -> home WiFi -> DSL linkage.
>>
>> Do you remember the Google wifi capture that their streetview cars did?
>> Most of the location providers use the physical presence of wifi networks as
>> part of how they locate sites.
>>
>> They also use the Android phones to feed back this sort of location data, so
>> they can compute location mappings and all. Apple presumably do the same
>> with their phones, too.

[...]

> None of those methods would require any browser interaction at all.
> My IP address would give me away.

Do you mean that the browser could calculate the location without
asking for permission?  Absolutely, and it is only courtesy from the
browser authors that mean that they do, which is worth keeping in
mind.  I don't believe that, for example, the CoreLocation service
from Apple requires permission requests to do this sort of geolocation
in OS-X.

HTML content, of course, can only do what the browser permits because
it doesn't have a direct bridge to run native code, which means it
can't read the visible wireless network list or anything like that.
(Absent security violations and the like, of course. :)

Your IP address, though, is much more error prone: it will give you a
city-scale location, typically, rather than a street address location
which you can obtain through wifi or cell sniffing (if you have a big
enough database of device locations that you trust and the processing
power to search it).

[...]

> I'm going to redo this with a sniffer and see what the traffic actually is.

Cool.  Keep us up to date on the results. :)

Regards,
     Daniel
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