That solution is suboptimal. If you don't broadcast it, then properly provisioned clients have to probe for it. Which they do, on every channel. So you go from one device beaconing the SSID (your AP) to all client devices advertising it, on every channel.

I think the difference we're talking about here between #1 and #3 is that #3 makes it much easier/cheaper to (for example) predict when you'll be out of town if they want to break into your house (router)...potentially even without ever traveling past it.

Just because this information is legal to collect, doesn't mean people think a nonprofit that claims to be committed to user privacy should be moving the center of gravity closer to your third scenario.

But maybe more importantly, we're not talking about "someone else" recording the information or just a few "people" "monitoring" an SSID. We're questioning the wisdom of an organization building software to systematically collect, store, and make an SSID far more readily available to far larger numbers of people.

Analogies are analogies because they're similar, not identical.

> You want people to stop "monitoring" your SSID? Stop freaking broadcasting it at all.

This is technocentrical BS, washing the hands to justify doing what you want.

1) Most people don't know that their SSIDs are being recorded (with position), so how do you expect them to make an informed decision? It's not like the information is readily available (I work in IT and I did not know about appending "no_map" to the SSID).

2) Everyone has a router, broadcasting the SSID. Do you really and honestly expect everyone to know how to disable it?