What3Words to launch rural applications awareness campaign

[primmiemoo]

I believe I’m right in being told last week during filming that the Mercedes “telematics” system has W3W built in now

If that's the one they use, hurrah! for the improvement. When my car next breaks down, they'll be able to find me without pathetic reliance on proximity of non-agricultural businesses.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Now describe where the incident is not where you’re calling from

Yeah different scenarios for sure. The calling “on the scene” scenario would typically be more immediate, urgent and life threatening. This I reckon is where the AML system is great as it requires no user intervention, extra apps etc.

It’s all natively supported with the OS of the phone. As long as the user can get signal / dial or start the emergency call sequence on their phone they don’t even have to speak. If someone is incapacitated or incapable of coherently getting it giving any sort of directions, let alone accurate one I think it’s a huge step forwards. All the back end infrastructure is there and I understand all the national emergency contact centre staff are trained to use it.

Taking nothing away from W3W or similar geolocation services like Google’s Plus Codes - I’m sure they have a place but to work they rely on both parties having device/app access and not transposing the words etc.

For several years, I’ve had several gateways noted with W3W address but if I’m being honest I’ve not yet found one third party company, courier, carrier etc that either successfully passes this info on to their drivers or equips them with a smart phone that they can use while driving. If they manage to phone beforehand it’s a minor miracle.

Odd but that’s been my honest experience of it in the last 3 or so years.

 

[JP1]

Yeah different scenarios for sure. The calling “on the scene” scenario would typically be more immediate, urgent and life threatening. This I reckon is where the AML system is great as it requires no user intervention, extra apps etc.

It’s all natively supported with the OS of the phone. As long as the user can get signal / dial or start the emergency call sequence on their phone they don’t even have to speak. If someone is incapacitated or incapable of coherently getting it giving any sort of directions, let alone accurate one I think it’s a huge step forwards. All the back end infrastructure is there and I understand all the national emergency contact centre staff are trained to use it.

Taking nothing away from W3W or similar geolocation services like Google’s Plus Codes - I’m sure they have a place but to work they rely on both parties having device/app access and not transposing the words etc.

For several years, I’ve had several gateways noted with W3W address but if I’m being honest I’ve not yet found one third party company, courier, carrier etc that either successfully passes this info on to their drivers or equips them with a smart phone that they can use while driving. If they manage to phone beforehand it’s a minor miracle.

Odd but that’s been my honest experience of it in the last 3 or so years.

I hear what you say

Every third party haulier rings us to clarify details for our own warehouse and our pallet network partner is quick to call if they can't get hold of a farmer or are missing a number for farm deliveries.

I'm thinking when we book transport the day before collection, we should give a W3W address with everything else and say we insist their traffic office interprets this for their own drivers. I bet everyone would soon get on the system then

 

[Yale]

Something on the radio sparked an idea.

It’s always difficult to change and remember passwords.

However you could pick say a gatepost or a tree on your farm and use its W3W code as a password.

Should be really secure and a lot easier to remember or change for another memorable place.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Something on the radio sparked an idea.

It’s always difficult to change and remember passwords.

However you could pick say a gatepost or a tree on your farm and use its W3W code as a password.

Should be really secure and a lot easier to remember or change for another memorable place.

I personally wouldn’t do that at all. It will be the opposite of secure.

If “they” have managed to get access to your address or postcode, its really a trivial exercise for them to mash the data they have from your identity / address and setup a “dictionary attack” to hack your W3W derived password, as W3W location codes by design are publicly accessible.

For example a 2 acre plot would have less than nine hundred W3W combinations. A computer could check through these in a few hundredths of a second.

You are far better using your phone / PC secure password generator / store to generate a random, unguessable password that is properly encrypted

 

[Yale]

I personally wouldn’t do that at all. It will be the opposite of secure.

If “they” have managed to get access to your address or postcode, its really a trivial exercise for them to mash the data they have from your identity / address and setup a “dictionary attack” to hack your W3W derived password, as W3W location codes by design are publicly accessible.

For example a 2 acre plot would have less than nine hundred W3W combinations. A computer could check through these in a few hundredths of a second.

You are far better using your phone / PC secure password generator / store to generate a random, unguessable password that is properly encrypted

OK,maybe not such a good idea then.....

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

OK,maybe not such a good idea then.....

A not very sophisticated crim, could do a google map search - look only at features / borders / hedges / buildings etc as these would be more likely places you would choose a random W3W combo - that would massively cut down on the “random” combinations that would need to be tried to probably only several hundred.

So yeah you could be handing them the keys on a plate. Soz. But best warned and forearmed these days, cyber crims are very clever indeed.

 

[Pilatus]

Serious question,how can foreign truck drivers etc be introduced to W3W,as very few of them can unfortunately read or speak English, and they are the ones that need to be aware of W3W and how to use it.I see W3W is now available in 26 languages so that should be of some help BUT there is still the problem of getting the W3W System more widely publicised, some thing which I think is still not allowing major uptake of the w3w system.
Are there any "SAT NAV" systems that now work in conjunction with a W3W position,so that I could put a W3W position in to the sat nav , rather than a post code, and then the SAT NAV will give me directions to the W3W position via the shortest route??

 

[Jungle Bill]

Serious question,how can foreign truck drivers etc be introduced to W3W,as very few of them can unfortunately read or speak English, and they are the ones that need to be aware of W3W and how to use it.I see W3W is now available in 26 languages so that should be of some help BUT there is still the problem of getting the W3W System more widely publicised, some thing which I think is still not allowing major uptake of the w3w system.
Are there any "SAT NAV" systems that now work in conjunction with a W3W position,so that I could put a W3W position in to the sat nav , rather than a post code, and then the SAT NAV will give me directions to the W3W position via the shortest route??

You can choose what language to use and flip between languages on the app, it can give the 3 words for any spot in any language. The W3W app integrates with Google and Apple maps to give directions.

 

[Brisel]

I was told the other day, I think they use a panel of providers.

For work I generally find Bing more up to date than Google

The age of the images in both of those varies tremendously. Here, the Bing image is September 2011. Google have 3 newer images since then with the most recent being July 2018. I looked up an old contracting client in Lincs whose chicken houses were built in 2013. They aren't even on the Google Earth imagery.

 

[milkloss]

OK,maybe not such a good idea then.....

I quite like the idea. You could pick any geographical location. First shag site, mother in laws grave, that sort of thing no one else would know.

 

[Yale]

I quite like the idea. You could pick any geographical location. First shag site, mother in laws grave, that sort of thing no one else would know.

That’s what I thought.....but what do I know?

 

[Lazy Sod]

It’s all natively supported with the OS of the phone. As long as the user can get signal / dial or start the emergency call sequence on their phone they don’t even have to speak. If someone is incapacitated or incapable of coherently getting it giving any sort of directions, let alone accurate one I think it’s a huge step forwards. All the back end infrastructure is there and I understand all the national emergency contact centre staff are trained to use it.

For this system to work, does it need the gps to be turned on the mobile? I never turn mine on as it increases the battery consumption.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

That’s what I thought.....but what do I know?

Random three words is agreed better than say a very simple password. Not perfect but definitely better. If you want to be really secure then use five (or more) completely random words.

The danger I was pointing out, is that if you were to use a publicly accessible service like W3W - which has direct correlation to your address - to generate your random password, then if your address is known, the “random” 3 words in your password suddenly become quite guessable by an attacker.

Really the best practise is to use a separate, quite different and very hard/impossible to guess passwords for each service or website. Using the same password is a really bad idea - because if when a website or service is hacked/breached, all your credentials are potentially exposed and using the same password exposes you badly to further attacks.

Using a password manager is really the only practical, secure and sensible way to manage now. Use 5 really random words (maybe with spaces, caps, special characters etc) as your master password.

All other passwords should be completely random, “strong”, machine generated (by your password manager) and different to each other.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

For this system to work, does it need the gps to be turned on the mobile? I never turn mine on as it increases the battery consumption.

From what I understand the phones OS controls all the location compute functions (I guess including activating the GPS receiver, even if it’s set to off by the user) when an emergency call is made.

https://crisisresponse.google/emergencylocationservice/how-it-works/

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Serious question,how can foreign truck drivers etc be introduced to W3W,as very few of them can unfortunately read or speak English, and they are the ones that need to be aware of W3W and how to use it.I see W3W is now available in 26 languages so that should be of some help BUT there is still the problem of getting the W3W System more widely publicised, some thing which I think is still not allowing major uptake of the w3w system.
Are there any "SAT NAV" systems that now work in conjunction with a W3W position,so that I could put a W3W position in to the sat nav , rather than a post code, and then the SAT NAV will give me directions to the W3W position via the shortest route??

In terms of uptake and third party support etc. it’s highly unlikely Google will ever natively support W3W.

In typical Google fashion they decided what was already out there (and there are about a dozen other approaches) didn’t meet ‘their requirements’ and decided to create their own location ‘shortcut’ system.

So they came up with their own standard and called it Google Plus Codes - it’s also embedded into Google Maps, so you can do exactly the same sort of thing but without a separate app etc. What a surprise eh! Google also say their system has other benefits, like it’s all open source, not proprietary, free for others to use/incorporate blah, blah

Whether other map providers choose to adopt W3W...only time will tell.

 

[JP1]

A year on from his talk at the Oxford Farming Conference, Chris Sheldrick, CEO of what3words, is hosting a webinar next Monday 29th April at 5pm. Chris will discuss how 3 word addresses are making it easier and faster to find rural locations.

Lasting approximately 25 minutes the session will also provide more information about how several UK emergency services are using what3words to improve response times in rural areas. The webinar will finish with a live Q&A. Please use the following link to sign up for free - http://landing.what3words.com/rurallocationswebinar

 

[deleted user 837354]

Cripes, don't use three known words for a password. As others have mentioned those words are in a database and could be used by a hacker.

Choose three words at random from a dictionary and use punctuation of some sort to separate them. This is much, much, more secure than choosing names or birthdays because that kind of information can be obtained from social media very readily.

 

[Foregoneconclusion]

I used w3w extensively last year to id locations of gates for flds for contractors to head to when i bought standing crops of grass to be baled. Then sent links to bod clearing flds with a further link to location of the stack.
I have used links to generate google locations also to help hauliers find delivery points.
Also to let my children know where to bring my tea..

It is a miraculous app..
More power to their elbows!

https://w3w.co/frizz.intricate.irrigated

 

[NZDan]

I use it quite often just to note the location of drains etc. You can tell an employee or contractor the exact location of something they need to look at or avoid.

I also have it for emergencies just in case. I have a friend whose son had an alarming experience not so long ago. Without going into details it involved being drunk and getting lost in the middle of nowhere. It would've been perfect in that case as he couldn't describe where he was over the phone.

I rolled my side by side on about the only part of the farm that is hard to see unless you're actually stand there, W3W would have been perfected for getting help. Both myself and my partner now have it loaded so if I do some thing stupid again I can txt her my location, we also have location services enabled on Snapchat so that we can see where the other is if either of us is contactable.