Hi malware fighters,
Thanks to fredvries here for all the effort and expertise he has put in this here thread. There are a couple of things I like to explain to those that maybe did not completely have grasped what I tried to communicate in my previous observations concerning these issues. I have no objections against the geo-location service and technology as such. As all other things in the world it can be used towards good beneficial purposes and may have unwanted side-effects as well. I do not want to comment that. What I want to say is that we have to see where it might lead us all. I like services and applications that always have an opt-out, where there is always the possibility to disable it.
And this is just around the corner as is explained with Instant Automatic Search based on Physical Location:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_ceo_next_great_stage_of_search_is_automatic.phpJust like with questionnaires on the phone, you can enlist somewhere if you do not want to be bothered in this way and no further like to receive these kind of calls. Silence will reign. Even worse are the scenario's where there is a free service and everybody is being brought on board through mentioning benefits and a lot of propaganda and later alternatives are no longer available and slowly but surely they are going to charge you for the service or alter the terms and conditions.
As fredvries has been so kindly showing us there are a lot of escapes from the technology and ways to opt out, but for the unaware that route isn't all that clear. Some know how to protect their anonymity whenever they need to, others like youngsters on Web 2.0 have to change their names to not longer be bothered by their Internet past to hunt them forever. So what I said is only, be aware, weigh all the arguments for yourself pro and contra and then make up your decision. Do not follow blindly, be aware you have free will. Nothing more and nothing less.
Sometimes there are no alternatives like with cashless banking, when the paperwork goes, new hey days for the phisher and the malcreant. So fredvries, thank you for starting the subject enabling all of us to discuss all the ramifications of the implementation of this technology in depth, I think here specifically of combinations of geo-location with tracking technology like fetchback tracking etc. etc.
polonus