

IPhone's localization system can be easily spoofed - tamberg
http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/080417_WiFi_location_spoofing/index_EN

======
byteCoder
The current system has an "accuracy" that sometimes can be most closely
measured in miles (i.e., it's not accurate at all). Certainly, that's better
than positioning in NYC when you're really in Zurich, but not by much.

Thus, any applications that would depend on pinpoint precise location are
going to have problems anyway. It seems the moral of the story is (as an
application developer) to use the location services as an advisory (but not as
an authoritative) service. The user should be given the capability to override
or further specify his/her location.

~~~
tienshiao
The current system has two components: 1. the GSM tower based one ("accuracy"
measured in miles) and 2. the Skyhook WIFI based.

If the Skyhook one returns results, your "accuracy" will probably be within a
hundred feet. If you want, you can add your own access point so your iPhone
will now where exactly home is:
<http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php>

The research in the article only targets Skyhook’s WPS system. From Skyhook's
form, it's clear that they use the access points MAC address as an identifier.
I hope that the researchers did not spend too much time and money to figure
out that all they needed to do was spoof some MAC addresses.

From Skyhook's side, they should be able to get better accuracy by using
multiple access points and signal strength to refine positioning. Of course
that assumes they have sufficient access point density in their database for
you location.

From the iPhone's side, it can check that the Skyhook results are within the
GSM tower results. The GSM tower results are presumably more reliable and more
difficult to spoof (compared to buying a $50 access point).

