Stalker Tech
from the come-out-come-out-wherever-you-are dept
It seems that "location-based" technologies are slowly growing in popularity. No one knows exactly what they're going to be used for, but that doesn't stop people from experimenting. Hewlett-Packard has donated a bunch of PDAs to the University of California at San Diego to see how students use a new buddy system that tells them where their buddy is. The system triangulates the user's location by seeing how far it is away from various WiFi access points. There are, of course, a lot of privacy questions being asked around campus. While, officially, you can only see the locations of people who have agreed to let you see them, people are quite sure that hackers will soon work around that hurdle. I agree that it's a little bit scary, but also see how it could be useful.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]