Microsoft announced on Monday a change to its geographic location positioning service.
The change was implemented on July 30 and addresses an issue highlighted by security researcher Elie Bursztein. CNET ran a story last week concerning Microsoft’s location database and highlighted an obvious privacy flaw. Microsoft has been collecting the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices worldwide. The database of locations was freely available on the web without any tight security or restrictions.
The change was implemented on July 30 and addresses an issue highlighted by security researcher Elie Bursztein. CNET ran a story last week concerning Microsoft’s location database and highlighted an obvious privacy flaw. Microsoft has been collecting the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices worldwide. The database of locations was freely available on the web without any tight security or restrictions.