I turn off the wifi on my laptop when I am not using it, to presumably prevent hacking into it when I am not on it. However, I have noticed the CURRENT WEATHER appearing on my home screen, before I enter my password to actually use it! I searched, and a few years ago, people said it wasn't possible, but one commenter said, "The new windows might do it" (or some comment like that). Well, it seems that it HAS to be able to do it if it is showing current weather! So now, I am going to have to turn my laptop completely off to provide the level of security I thought I had! (I guess it won't be long before they can access my laptop even with the power off)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (38)
sorted by:
I agree this is probably the case. Even my local rural weather service predicts 10 days out (although anything more than 2 isn't necessarily accurate). Payload probably contains at least a day or two in the future for the given location (zip code?).
What would be a good test, if you can determine how location is determined, would be to be offline and pick a location on the other side of the country or world and see if it is able to communicate and pull down the forecast.
Although you'd really have to know the specifics of the data. Simple thing like temp and a few types of weather (sunny, cloudy, rain, etc.) could be encoded very compactly. Given the type of bandwidth most people have, it's not inconceivable that updates could include the entire country or even world and be cached. Probably a drop in the bucket compared to, say, a Youtube video.
Best test would be a machine sitting between your laptop and the Internet using Wireshark to analyze the traffic.