Location Of Risk May Be On Websites
Here is a challenging term to get both tongues and minds around.
A study into ‘geo-inference attacks’ has just been published.
Researchers at the National University of Singapore have looked at the risks arising from location information held by computers after web browsing.
Without giving exact details, you may be relieved to hear, they established how an attacker could exploit this to infer details about where someone lives.
Many websites use computer memory to store information about the searches we make in order to make any repeat enquiries quicker. As an example, most of us will be familiar with web browsers pre-filling their address boxes with sites we visited recently as we start typing. Some of these contain location data. As an example, the popular Craigslist site includes city names in web addresses.
Solihull users are likely to browse https://www.birmingham.craigslist.co.uk/. But it is mapping sites that can be really revealing.
When we ‘Get Directions@ with Google Maps, once again we can find boxes prefilling from previous searches.
This could be a concern when the Start Point for some of our enquiries is our home postcode.
The study did not go so far as to spell out the exact risks, but we can presume it could contribute towards identity theft.
Furthermore, when mapping enquiries from a particular laptop switch to using, say, Bruges as a Start Point for a few days, it is a pretty good bet that there is an empty house in the home neighbourhood.
Online security risks can be reduced by regular use of a browser’s Delete history and Clear Website Data options, particularly after entering personal and address data into sites.
