On 2013-10-27 08:25, staticsafe wrote:
On 10/26/2013 16:24, James A. Donald wrote:
On 2013-10-27 00:53, Kelly John Rose wrote:
Thunderbird sends gps to google? That seems a bit odd considering they are not connected.�
Evil state sponsored conspiracy. The Cathedral. I thought everyone knew this.
Thunderbird/tools/options/advanced/config editor/geo.enabled.
Set to disabled.
Who on this list has not done so?
Of course people usually use Thunderbird on their main computer, which generally does not have a gps, but it usually has a wifi card. Thunderbird detects the nearest wifi networks .
When google does street view for Google Earth, they also detect nearby wifi networks, so the data supplied by Thunderbird is matched against the data collected by google during street view surveys.
Thus, whenever and wherever you use Thunderbird, google can supply the authorities with the closest street address to where you are using Thunderbird, and pictures taken from the street very close to that address. Thus the authorities not only have your email, which being sent in the clear has no expectation of privacy, but also a picture of building that you are sitting in when sending the email.
What?
Citations please.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/geolocation/ says everything to the contrary.
David Petraeus would disagree - particularly as he got nailed for using email from an inappropriate location, not for web browsing from an inappropriate location. Notice while your link piously gives an innocent explanation for what Firefox is doing with a list of nearby wifi points, your link does not discuss what the hell Thunderbird is doing with a list of nearby wifi points. The document you cite says that if you OK a website knowing where you are, your browser then sends that website (not Google) your location, which can indeed happen if you fiddle with the settings. What, however, happens in the default setting, is that if you OK a website knowing where you are, your browser does not send them a list of your nearby wifi points, but instead tells them to request your location from Google. There seems to be no technological reason why they cannot request your location from Google without waiting for your browser to tell them to do so, though I suppose Google might be displeased. Which procedure implies that Google already has a list of your nearby wifi points, from which it has already deduced your location.