AOL’s partner Skyhook Wireless has been collecting information about WiFi routers across the US and Canada and has created a database of 16 million WiFi routers!

The perpetrator here is Skyhook Wireless. For the last few years, it has sent a fleet of 200 trucks through the streets of 2,500 cities and towns in the U.S. and Canda. According to the Associated Press, “These trucks scan for the pulse given off at least once a second by every home wireless router or commercial hotspot, recording the unique identifying code for that piece of Wi-Fi equipment. That code is correlated with the exact physical location where it was captured using GPS in the trucks, which cruise the streets at 15 to 50 miles per hour as they collect this information.”

What is Skyhook using this massive database for? At the moment, it’s being used in concert with the AOL Skyhook “Near Me” AIM plug-in. The plug-in adds a new “Near Me” buddy group to AIM, and will show you contacts who are within a certain number of miles of you.

This stinks. I really don’t think it’s appropriate for AOL and Skyhook to use anyone’s information, even if it’s just limited to the router location, if they don’t explicity opt-in. They need to at least offer an opt out as no one should have their router listed in this database no matter if it’s open, secured, and/or has the SSID hidden or not. It’s simply not Skyhook’s or AOL’s business if someone has a wireless router and for any company to collect this data is nervy.

[AOL: The biggest Wi-Fi privacy invader ever?]