[Cialug] _nomap for wireless networks

[Jonathan A. Kollasch]

On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 07:37:30AM -0600, Todd Walton wrote:
> Google starts a "robots.txt" for wireless networks:
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/greater-choice-for-wireless-access.html
> 
> Google collects information about a person's location using various
> markers, including nearby wireless networks.  Now, the owner of a
> wireless network can tell Google not to use his/her access point as a
> marker by appending "_nomap" to the network name.
> 
> Why would a person want to do that?  What's the benefit?  What's the
> drawback of letting someone else determine their location by your
> network?

Lame, I don't want to change my ESSID to opt out.  It should be a opt-in
sort of thing.  And the ESSID is about the lamest way to do it anyway.
Not that there's a decent way to do it.  They really shouldn't be doing
it at all.

Also, This reminds me, I should go back to using my dumbphone.

Also, what mechanism exists for a browser to obtain a list of ESSIDs in
the vicinity of your computer?  At least, I sort of doubt this has been
implemented on xulrunner for NetBSD.

	Jonathan Kollasch