Re: Faking Geolocation

Faking (or fuzzing) geolocation was the subject of a very lively debate at the IETF meeting recently.  There are obvious problems;  repeated reports of location, even when fuzzed, can improve accuracy for the recipient (and yes, there are ways around this, such as reporting the same location until you have moved more than the fuzzing distance; read the IETF discussion before following up!).  In addition, there are aspects of your location that are harder to hide (like your IP address, resolvable to <1km according to a recent article we saw).  Even without the techniques described there, a small amount of work may resolve it;  using a starbucks IP address and a location in an area of a city suggests strongly that you are at one of the two dozen starbucks in those few blocks, for example.

David Singer
Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 15 April 2011 16:26:34 UTC