Question

• Networks have a ‘dual' property’. They provide information that allows us to estimate our location. But in doing so we may also reveal information about our location to other parties.

  Consider each of the following scenarios and for each one explain whether it could potentially reveal information about your location to other parties.

  • i.While travelling in open country you estimate your location using the GPS built into your phone.
  • ii.While in an urban setting you switch on your phone's WiFi and it polls the various WiFi routers that it can detect within range.
  • iii.While in a shopping centre you estimate your position using a beacon-based system. In order to know the location of any particular beacon your phone uses the id code broadcast by the beacon to look up the location of the beacon in an online directory.

Answer 1

i). Location identification through GPS involves using the 'Trilateration' algorithm. There are around 30 satellites revolving around earth, at any particular instant of time there are 4 satellites over a given point on earth. In order to communicate with these satellites we need a device that has GPS system. The GPS works by gathering the location of the satellites in range to this device and calculates the actual latitude and longitude using the 'Trilateration' algorithm.

So in this method of finding one's location, the GPS system doesn't reveal the location to network.

ii). When a device is connected to the WIFI router then a registry is saved in the router with the MAC address of the router and the provided IPV4 address. Since this data is not managed by the device, this data can be used by the Network administrators even after the device is disconnected.

So in this method of finding one's location, the location is tracked by the network.

iii). In the Becon system of finding location. Since the Becon only emits data and does not actually save the data, the location of the device is completely limited to the device which access to the online directory. So in this method the Network administrators do not have access to the device location. Unless the online directory secretly saves the user session and the id code searched, in this case the administrators that own the online directory get the location details of the device.