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Google tracking and mapping your wireless devices

By George Ou 24 April 2010 4 Comments

There are reports that Google is tracking people’s Wi-Fi MAC addresses and will be mapping them onto Google Maps.  The MAC address which can uniquely identify a person’s laptop, smartphone, or any other device with 802.11 Wi-Fi capability.  If this pans out to be true, then I have no idea what Google is thinking and I can’t imagine that they would be allowed to continue on doing this.

However, it should be noted that others can already do this and it might be a good idea to randomize your MAC address using this free tool.  I would also WARN that anyone using MAC filtering on their own Wi-Fi network at home or a company Wi-Fi network should NOT change their MAC address because they would be locked out of the network.  However, I highly recommend against the use of MAC filtering but if you’re stuck with it for whatever reason, you’re stuck with the same MAC address.

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