Consumers can now opt out of Google's Wi-Fi mapping

Consumer Reports News: November 15, 2011 12:08 PM

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Google is offering owners of Wi-Fi routers a chance to opt out of having their location information featured in Google's Street View mapping feature. The move, announced yesterday, is Google's attempt to address concerns that collection of such data creates privacy issues.

Google typically collects information from Wi-Fi systems when it sends out its fleet of vehicles to create "street views" of local areas for its online Google Maps service. By gathering the openly broadcasted data—router names, IP addresses and so on—which the company claims "doesn't identify people," Google can determine rough geographic locations in its online maps and aid GPS-based location fixes. Moreover, having such geographic data allows Google to offer location-based services—helping smart phone users find the closest Starbucks coffee shop, say.

Last year, however, it was revealed that Google's collection efforts also snared private consumer data, such as e-mails, from home Wi-Fi networks. And that riled privacy regulators from both the European Union and in the U.S.

According to Google's blog, Wi-Fi operators can now choose to keep their router information from Google's Location Server database—if they change their router's name. From the post:

To opt out, visit your access point's settings and change the wireless network name (or SSID) so that it ends with "_nomap." For example, if your SSID is "Network," you'd need to change it to "Network_nomap."

Greater choice for wireless access point owners [Official Google Blog]
About Google's Location-based services [Google]
Here's how to opt out of Google's WiFi snooping [Computer World]
Google offers Street View opt-out for Wi-Fi mapping; Unethical snooping, yet we must opt-out? [ZDNet]

—Paul Eng