Google collecting public Wi-Fi data is a known thing and the company’s justification for doing so is to provide “faster mapping services” to mobile devices. Moreover, the services were never “opt-in”.
Google’s Street View cars pick up the data of the areas they pass through and store it into their public location database. Recently, the search giant has offered the users choice to pt out.
The announcement was made by Google via their official blog. A couple of months back, the company had announced that the service is on the verge of opting-out, and that Google will not use the user’s Wi-Fi data if the user chooses to opt out.
The blog makes this official. Basically, it is adding “_nomap” string to your SSID.
But that addition, which Google for some reason thinks is easy, is a little difficult for most of the users to follow. Many people are not even aware that they need a wireless router to access the internet.
Most users connect the telco provided device with the default key and stop wondering. This stand of Google has got many a user shocked.
If you venture here, you will find the router specific information that Google offers for changing the SSID. Google stated that they use only the publicly broadcast information, including the SSID of the device and the MAC address of the router.
It seems that company chose the SSID-name change option in order to prevent others option the user’s access point out of the service without their permission. But the thing is that the next time a mobile device sends information about the Wi-Fi access point and sees the “_nomap” string, the information will be dropped from the location database.
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