Re: Geolocation: Security and Privacy

On Jun 10, 2008, at 7:43 PM, Kartikaya Gupta wrote:
> It seems to me that any approach of this sort would be vulnerable to
> attacks. As somebody mentioned in a previous post, random fuzzing can be
> defeated by doing multiple requests and averaging the results.

> In the snap-to-grid approach I think you're describing, a more precise
> position can be pinpointed if you poll the location repeatedly and record
> the exact moment you switch from one grid-line to another. i.e. If your
> fuzzing reduces precision by rounding down, say from 3.19 to 3.1, then the
> moment that value switches to 3.2 means the actual location has switched
> from 3.19 to 3.20, and you have your precision back.

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Doug Turner <doug.turner@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why can't you just remove/round precision from the lat/long?
>
> For example, this:  37.41857,-122.08769, becomes 37.4, -122.1

this was already explained, in fact in the precise message to which you replied.

we're not talking about users sending one fixed data point to a server once.

we're talking about users engaged in a dialog where their client will
send updates, and as soon as the update needs to cross from one
truncated value to another, the service can determine with precision
where the user is (one axis at a time, true, but still with
precision).

Received on Wednesday, 11 June 2008 04:52:45 UTC