A group of researchers from technical University of Denmark proved that an Android application that collects information about access points to Wi-Fi, is able to pinpoint the user’s location in 90% of cases. For iPhone and iPad the problem is not urgent, as in iOS 8, Apple has introduced a mandatory spoofing the MAC address of the device when connected to the Network.
The possibility of determining the geographical coordinates of the user applications is quite obvious, but until recently almost nobody thought that giving up the location of the person can access point Wi-Fi. When the game, for example, Clash of Clans before installing the requested rights on the smartphone, the right to obtain location data are requested separately from the possibility to connect to the global Network.
“This allows developers of third-party software to collect data about the movement of man, not hiding and avoiding policy and the privacy policy of the Android ecosystem,” reads the study by Danish scientists.
The study, which was carried out for six months and involved 63 students. Usually people use the same routes and, as it turned out, an average of only four access points to Wi-Fi enough to determine their current location.
Application developer with access to Wi-Fi can get information about the connection point of the user and to find out information about the place of his position in most cases.
