Skyhook Wireless

[chaffed]

I'm sure some have heard or seen Skyhook.

The jist of the company is a commercial business using geo-location of wifi networks to trake wifi enabled devices. Such as when a laptop is stolen the laptop will phone home with network information it is on. Using their database they can give a reasonable location of the laptop or device.

I wonder how they are getting their information. They take submissions from the public. However it would be easy for them to lift the information from wigle or a user lift the information and foward it as their own.

Maybe I'm paranoid but if one, wigle doesn't see any money from it I'd be pissed or two, I don't see any compinsation for my data gathered (but that's against the wigle TOS).

[uhtu]

it would be unusual for a company to try and illegally use data for a commercial product.
wigle.net - while large and fluffy - is not the only source of information about wireless networks. my second favorite, of course being that old standby: driving around with a laptop, gps and an antenna

[chaffed]

In my browsing of various wireless / war driving sites I come to find wigle to be the most valuable.

I'm just concerned with some of the glaring violations of licenses like Linksys and the GPL.

I wonder how one could determine the source of their data?

[izzy4505]

Look for data known to be bad, and see if it's in their DB as well. That'd probably be the best way to check. Although anybody smart about lifting data like that would probably fuzzy it up a bit, moving things around so the coordinates are not exact. Heh, they could even apply an algorithm to it I suppose so they still get the "exact" data. However, I also seriously doubt anybody would use WiGLE's database for commercial reasons. There is no guarantee of accuracy, and the data has been found with all kinds of excellent, and crap equipment alike. Plus, bobzilla keeps an eye on the logs I think. Spoofable yes, but likely, naaa. It does make you wonder though if open source programmers are going to start hiring more lawyers in the future. Hmmmm, if the civilized world would just leave us nerds alone.

[mc_sikes]

I just saw msn is doing a virtual earth demo with wifi location in it. I wonder if our data was sold...hmm...I BET we'd get paid for that...

[soundhackr]

I just saw msn is doing a virtual earth demo with wifi location in it. I wonder if our data was sold...hmm...I BET we'd get paid for that...

hey, that's a good question...if we submitted data, it's for the community right...like open source, not to be sold...

how does that work?

[uhtu]

"open source" has no bearing on anything's commercial or non-commercial nature.

points posted to wigle are donated to wigle and get digested into the wigle dataset, use of which is governed by the end user license agreement.

if you as a posting user agree to our commercial use bit (its on the main page if you've logged in, and haven't indicated one way or the other yet), they are made part of a set of points we can apply towards keeping wigle operating. If you choose to not help out, that's fine too, and your points aren't part of that set.

[chaffed]

I just re-read the EULA. It's kinda ambigous. It doesn't explicitly state who ownes the data. Just mentions that WiGLE can sue anyone who violate the use agreement of the data.

But it'd be nice to see WiGLE's server costs taken care of for some years to come.

[GPSnerd]

IMO Skyhook is obsolete, as I pretty much rely on LoJack for this kind of stuff, like when I got my car stolen in Phoenix...not a fan of that place. In order for Skyhook to become a more legitimate business in my opinion they need to improve their continuity by installing software that allows their system to function through disasters and anything else that may slow them down. Until that happens and they use new technology to never fail, I will stick with Lojack. Why would I want to replace a technology that helped me find both a stolen car and a lost computer with dvd burning software plans that took me three years to complete?