[General Questions and Answers] GalaxyA325G:
To expand on the problem set....

Apple & Google are getting all this private information about YOU from

your neighbors and from every phone that is within Wi-Fi of your house.

<https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/...e-home-ap-broadcast-beacon-is-hidden.4284897/>

While Google implemented some checks, Apple completely ignored privacy.

The simplest takeaway, other than Apple lies about privacy, is for each

one of us to do this one trivially simple & harmless step, which is...

*If everyone added "_nomap" to their router AP SSID, Apple & Google*

*"say" they will scrub your information from their public databases.*

So, if, for example, your router AP SSID is, oh, say, "My-SSID", then

simply change it to "My-SSID_nomap" and that is all you must do today.

When you read the seminal paper, you can't help but notice the huge difference in the way Apple implemented the lookup versus how Google implemented it (e.g.,

Google is 1:1, not 1:400, and actually Google is 2:1 because Google

requires corroborating evidence and even then, Google limits access to

its database while Apple's horrifically unsound implementation requires

NONE of those checks.

(As an aside, there is a reason Apple's implementation is so insecure

but it has to do with Apple spending orders of magnitude more on

advertising than on R&D given Apple is an almost purely marketing

company that sells to gullible people who don't understand the product

and Apple knows that so Apple caters to their fears in words only - but

never in actual R&D implementation, unfortunately).

Said more simply, the main REASON Apple implemented the lookup the way

they did was apple's main goal was to be able to ADVERTISE privacy

(without actually implementing it). You'll never hear me ever say that

Apple MARKETING isn't the most brilliant organization in the world.

What Apple is doing is advertising privacy while throwing privacy to the

wolves in such a way that it's almost criminal how Apple is doing this.

However, while Apple is worse than Google on privacy flaws, Google is

who started this whole SSID/BSSID/GPS/dBm database quadruplet, which,

let's never forget, is UNIQUELY WHO WE ARE AND WHERE WE LIVE. Exactly.

I need to repeat that it is EXACTLY us, since many people think the

quadruplet isn't uniquely us, but it's no less exactly us than our own

Name, Social Security Number, Address & GPS quadruplet is exactly us.

What's DIFFERENT about the atrocious way Apple implemented the privacy

hole is that Apple throws 400 of us under the bus at each request,

whereas Google only throws one of us under the bus at each request for

our location (and Google limits the number of location queries).

Apple has no plans to live up to their facetious privacy claims, in that

Apple's own suggested workaround is to append "_nomap" to your router's

SSID, which is something we've all known about & implemented years ago.

The problem with that mechanism is multifold, one of which it still

doesn't prevent the *upload* of your private information to Apple's and

Google's (and Mozilla's and NetStumblers and WiGle's, etc.) databases.

The more important problem with that "_nomap" mechanism is it depends on

people not being ignorant - which - I posit - is a fatal privacy flaw.

We all knew years ago that Google had implemented that "opt out"

mechanism when it should have been an "opt in" mechanism instead. But

Google knew nobody would opt in so we're stuck with having to opt out to

even begin to protect ourselves from our own neighbors throwing our

privacy under the bus (and from everyone who drives past our homes).

The problem only gets worse when you find out that Google, in Android

15, plans on making the bluetooth radio mandatory (i.e., you can't turn

it off for more than one day) and both Apple & Google have made their

latest phones lie about being shut off (they're *always* on even when

you "think" you turned them off!) and when you realize that Google lied

about why they're making location privacy (aka, tracking you by the

Wi-Fi of your neighbors) mandatory since about August of last year in

the Google Maps app (where the reason is clearly to populate their

database).

After all that vitriol I expended on behalf of the way both Apple &

Google implemented this privacy flaw, I leave some left for neighbors.

Q: Where do we think Apple and Google are getting all this information?

A: From everyone out there who doesn't know how to properly use a phone

and from everyone out there who doesn't know how to set up a router.

That means your neighbor isn't setting up the router for your privacy.

And everyone who drives past your house isn't setting up the phone for

your privacy.

Apple & Google are getting all this private information about YOU from

your neighbors and from every phone that is within Wi-Fi of your house.

What I do are two fundamental things that most people don't understand

1. I set up my home routers to not throw my neighbors under the bus

2. I set up my client devices to not throw my neighbors under the bus

If everyone did that, we wouldn't have these privacy flaws.