A rather disturbing website...

Even allowing for that, its still of no relevance. We are talking about someone remote working out you location. They don't have access to the SSID or MAC address of the wifi router you are using, hence they can't use it even if they had all of google's database.

ISP gets an IP link over ATM (originally a multiple of 155Mbits/s, but I think they're now a multiple of 622Mbits/s), and customer's sessions are presented as L2TP sessions over that IP link (i.e. IP nested in L2TP's UDP/IP). ISP never sees the customer's ATM session.

BT also have a service where they will actually terminate the L2TP sessions and route the end-users traffic directly to the internet for the ISP, but I don't know any ISP which uses that. It wouldn't leave anything much for the ISP to do.

In message , at

An app just needs to use:

and send the result server-side. Although asking for your location is probably quicker and easier, as that will combine information from GPS (if switched on) and GSM, as well as wifi.

In message , at

But an application you are running on your server could ask my laptop where it's located. And quite possibly in a way that "I" didn't realise it was happening routinely.

I often don't know where I, my laptop or my phone, am. That's why there are location services.

For example "where is the nearest bus stop", "log my position into Foursquare", "in which direction is the GSM mast I'm connected to", and so on. [And I never use my laptop or phone as a satnav, although clearly one could if one wanted to].

Nice one, thanks.

A lot of people seem to think that tradesmen are illiterate yahoos. I had an interesting chat a year or two ago with a plumber-gasfitter about some books he saw on my shelf. I also saw a builder's van near my house a couple of months ago with the complete works of Shakespeare on the dashboard.

Made Oi Laarf because it was the first thought I had when I saw The Shard.

Indeed - but an "app" is not a web page being rendered in a browser.

Many people are surprised when they find out that I enjoy going to the ballet or watching a Shakespeare play (reading the complete works would be a bit too much) although I do have a copy.

I noticed that some reincarnation of the Daily Sport has started to appear in the snap cabin at work. It's the joiner that buys it. And there is nearly always been a copy or two of The Sun and the Daily Star dotted around the building site.

I decided to read the map on the wall giving directions to A&E. Much more interesting as it sends you to the wrong hospital.

In message , at

Why does that matter? It's just a demonstration of the capability, which can also be made available on other platforms.

There is quite a difference between attempting to capture location information from people using normal web browsers, and doing the same using code of your choosing running natively on the client's computer.

Just using wifi makes it no easier for someone at the server end to capture your location with a normal web server. Obviously with a custom app at the client end, you can get far more information from the OS and pass it back.

In message , at

What concerns me is that the "code of [my] choosing" (running on the client), could easily be something the user has innocently installed themselves. Like a browser with "activate geolocation" ticked in the options, let alone a feature built into the operating system.

Sure - the usual warnings apply. Note only the "normal" risk of trojan software, but even the "helpful" bonus applications so many vendors will try and give you when you install something else and fail to until the relevant boxes.

In message , at

And worse than that, if your "normal" software has trojan aspects built in.

On Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:34:14 +0100, Artic