New Firefox add-on tracks your location

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October 8, 2008, 10:43 AM —  PC Advisor — 

A new Firefox add-on can pinpoint your location using WiFi signals.

Geode has been developed by Mozilla and uses Skyhook's Loki technology to identify a user's location from local WiFi hotspots. Mozilla claims the technology can pinpoint the user's location, correct to within 10-20 meters, in less than a second.

The add-on has been designed to work with mapping and geo-tagging websites and is a trial version of a function that will appear in the forthcoming Firefox 3.1 web browser.

A demo application called Food Finder works with Geode to identify restaurants and cafés in the immediate vicinity on a Google Map.

The add-on has raised some privacy concerns but Mozilla claims users will be able to specify whether they want their location revealed.

"With Geode, when a website requests your location a notification bar will ask how much information you want to give that site: your exact location, your neighborhood, your city or nothing at all," the company said in a blog.

Mozilla also said it intends to refine the technology before the launch of Firefox 3.1.

» posted by abennett

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Where Google Chrome security fails: the password
I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann

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