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Thread: Google data gathering

  1. #1
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    Google data gathering

    I've not got all that much to hide but I enjoy the thought of privacy and I don't like my personal data being gathered for the sake of it.

    I read on a recent PocketGPSWorld newsletter of Google Maps collecting data every time you use a Google service.

    We may all need to MAC Spoof to beat Google's game.

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    Papa Smurf
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    Re: Google data gathering

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Doolan View Post
    I've not got all that much to hide but I enjoy the thought of privacy and I don't like my personal data being gathered for the sake of it.

    I read on a recent PocketGPSWorld newsletter of Google Maps collecting data every time you use a Google service.

    We may all need to MAC Spoof to beat Google's game.
    but the only mac address they would capture is the address of your router - so changing your ethernet cards mac address, as you suggest, in your 2nd link would have no effect whatsoever

    also, this is NOT traceable back to you when using a google service anyway - your MAC address is only traceable by your actual ISP, or to put it more clearly "MAC address will always be in the header of the frame (Tor or not) but this is between devices on the same segment, as a packet moves from device to device the MAC address field changes. IP addressing is what is used for packets to navigate the internet not MAC addressing.".

    i.e. do a traceroute from your pc to google.com : it passes through several connections, all network interfaces in each step will have their own MAC address and only the last one is technically "seen" by the destination.

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    Re: Google data gathering

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post

    also, this is NOT traceable back to you when using a google service anyway -
    So, why is Google gathering MAC addresses, are you inferring its Street View operators are wasting their time (OK, they don't personally collect the data), any idea why the techies at PocketGPSWorld are concerned, are they just geeks with nothing to better to do than worry the proles?

    Google would find it quite tiresome and probably costly to identify every IP address that links to a Google service but if it already had the MAC Addresses and software to capture them at the service end, identification would be simple.

    Take it to the bank, Google is gathering this data, your data, for something and it will benefit Google more than you; oh and just like Street View, I doubt if you'll have any say in how your MAC address is used and sold on to other data gatherers.

    Google "MAC address changer" and you'll find hundreds of sites giving away and selling software to enable MAC address changing; are the owners of these sites all "geeks with nothing to better to do than worry the proles?"

    I suppose it's for the greater good, eh? I sometimes worry for sleepwalkers.

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    Re: Google data gathering

    Google for magnetic healing and you will find lots of stuff as well it's still crap though. As ds says a mac address is a unique Id in each device. The actual Article says they grabbed the mac of saps they passed. I can see how this helps with triangulation for location based services when gps signal can't be obtained and you have wireless turned on.

    But to answer your question yes you, the gps blokes and all those google sites are worrying about nothing. Mac address changers are commonly used by hackers and service Staff. How do I know? Until I changed job to CLAS I used to have these letters after my name ccna CCDa ccnp ccdp ccie - google them

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    Papa Smurf
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    Re: Google data gathering

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Doolan View Post
    Google would find it quite tiresome and probably costly to identify every IP address that links to a Google service but if it already had the MAC Addresses and software to capture them at the service end, identification would be simple.
    Identifying the IP address of everyone that links to a google service is easy and automatic, they appear in the logs and every web server captures them. MAC addresses are not stored in this way as they have nothing to do with the HTTP connection, even if it was useful to capture them when someone connects to a web page - which it isn't. So the collection of MAC addresses is purely from broadcasting wi-fi equipment at a location and not connected to your connection to any google services. (many routers allow you to change the mac address as a default option if it worries you).

    You are right to point it out though, i'm going to look into it a bit more.

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