Google to let you opt out your wireless router

Google has built a large world-wide database of all the wireless routers it could detect during its street view photo sessions.  Along with GPS coordinates where it found the wireless router, the MAC address of the router sits in a huge database somewhere on Google’s cloud.

Now, somewhere in Googleland, you will find my wireless router’s MAC address along with the coordinates for a specific address or groups of addresses somewhere in Norman, Oklahoma (I just threw that in to lead you all astray in trying to find me).  There is no name attached to that data and definitely no personally identifiable data.

The only way anyone from Google could know it was Jonathan’s wireless router would be if they came into my house and managed to find the secret door that leads into my hardened bunker where I write these missives.  They would then have to unlock the glass-door to the air-conditioned computer cabinet, look underneath the wireless router to find the MAC address and then rush back to their database and look it up.

In other words, in my humble opinion, this alleged privacy invasion is a bunch of baloney.

That said, Google has bowed to public pressure and has allowed you to “opt-out” your wireless router.  They will have the opt-out site in place sometime this fall.

I imagine you will then enter your MAC address and they will purge you from their database.

If you really believe Google’s database is an invasion of your privacy, I have a nice trick to play on Google.  Find someone in another city or even in another state and exchange wireless routers.

Just reset it to the factory default which is usually accomplished by holding in the reset button.  Swap routers and set up your necessary configuration.

Then when a cell phone user wants to know where a Sushi and Hot Dog Shoppe is they might get directed to a German beer garden.  The cell phone would pick up your wireless router’s MAC address look up what businesses and sights are near that router.

With enough complaints, Google would pull that MAC address from their list, but not until you tic off quite a few smartphone users.

For myself, I’m keeping my MAC address on Google’s list.  My wireless router is the closest one to the local Piggley-Wiggley Market, Billy Bob’s Fish and Bait Restaurant and Ed ‘n Fred’s Market.  How would visitors know the locations these fine establishments?