Apple Has More Cash Holdings than US Government

[bobo.cx]

According to this NewScientist article:

Quote:
Online adverts could soon start stalking you. A new way of working out where you are by looking at your internet connection could pin down your current location to within a few hundred metres.

Similar techniques are already in use, but they are much less accurate. Every computer connected to the web has an internet protocol (IP) address, but there is no simple way to map this to a physical location. The current best system can be out by as much as 35 kilometres.


Yong Wang from China has found a way to use businesses and universities as landmarks to much more accurately pinpoint your location on the Internet. Many of these organizations have their server IP addresses tied to their physical location. So first Wang used Google Maps to provide them with the locations of around 76,000 landmarks. The new method then goes through three stages to pinpoint where you are located:

Stage One

This first stage measures the time it takes to send a data packet to your computer and converts that to a distance which can get your location down to around 200 kilometers.

Stage Two

The second stage then sends data packets to every landmark area that they had indexed in your 200 kilometer area to find out which routers they pass through. They compare the routers to the routers your connection uses and notes each landmark that uses the same routers. At this point they will then compare how long a packet takes to reach each machine from the router which they can convert into an estimated distance. By using this information they can shrink the area down on where you are potentially located.

Stage Three

In this final third stage they will then repeat the landmark search and find which landmark is closest to your computer by comparing packet delay times. They claim on average this can get your location down to 690 meters which is accurate enough to get your location down to a few streets. Sometimes their method can get your location down to 100 meters!

Normally to get this sort of accuracy it would require you to deliberately disclose your location, but this method can find your location without your permission. The only way around this would be to use some sort of proxy server. If you are concerned about your privacy, this is scary news!

[lets4410]

My hats off to Yong Wang for being inventive enough to create this, but does anyone really want to be found 24 hours a day ? Don't think this is really needed unless it's for people who might need fast medical attention.

[jonson00]

Excellent sharing man,
Hope to read more stuff just like this.

[jonemike]

thanks for sharing this information.

[vicky_patel]

Excellent sharing man,Hope to read more stuff just like this.

[affdec]

Thanks for sharing information...........

[Grace Hall]

Thanks for sharing.......