CNET's Declan McCullagh reports on Microsoft restricting access to their Wi-Fi geolocation database shortly after this CNET article describing how to track devices using such databases. I have written about these databases before here, here, and here. Specifically Microsoft is preventing users from querying for the location of a single Wi-Fi device by specifying just one MAC addresses. Prior to the change it was possible to track an individual phone or laptop by querying for the location of that device's MAC address. CNET describes a test where they were able to track a device as it moved around Columbus Ohio. This would indicate that the underlying database is updated in near real time, and that it is collecting on mobile devices as well as on the fixed Wi-Fi base stations it is supposed to catalog for enhanced location services.

Tracking mobile devices can only harm the accuracy of enhanced GPS location services because they move around and could potentially give misleading information. It would be easy to eliminate such devices from the database because the type of device is discoverable from the MAC address they are collecting.

While there is no reason to track mobile devices for enhanced GPS, there are all kinds of less savory reasons to gather and track this kind of information. I note that Microsoft's solution is to prevent access to this individualized tracking information about mobile devices rather than to stop collecting it…..