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cable wifi location question


badbass

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You can get a GeoIP of the AP via the external IP, or if it's been scanned by wardrivers, then may be logged in a database with it's correlating location data, SSID and MAC address.

It's not up to Comcast so much to block or enable these though, but if you want to block it, it's up to the end user for the most part to disable tracking locally since it can be triangulated by a few factors, from your Browsers GeoIP settings, to your IP address, to the AP's broadcasting SSID to the world along with it's associated MAC address. Stopping your OS and Browser from leaking your location doesn't stop your AP you use from being mapped though. If you aren't tunneling out of the AP to the internet, then your IP is that of the AP's DHCP lease and sites will be able to see this and get a general GeoIP lookup to where you are just on the IP alone so long as it's isn't proxied or using a VPN on its own. Some free wifi does mask their locationgs via proxies or other services, but this is usually for filtering services and traffic they don't want on the network, which may or may not run you through a third party server making your location look different than your local coffee shop or McDonalds.

There is also no way for the AP to disable being scanned externally and have it's MAC address logged for the associated SSID being broadcast. Most wifi/wardriving apps these days can show and upload general vicinity with GPS coordinates to online databases, so if your AP has ever been scanned externally it may already be online in some database where and what the SSID and MAC/Spoofed Address MAC is found. That doesn't tie it to you so much as it can be cross referenced with your AP and external IP from the ISP if both are known, they can better narrow down where you are.

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