Cyril Lionel Houri (born April 1969 in

Meudon Meudon () is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris. The city is known for many historic monuments and some extraordinary trees. One of t ...

Hauts-de-Seine Hauts-de-Seine (; ) is a Departments of France, département in the Île-de-France Regions of France, region, Northern France. It covers Paris's western inner Banlieue, suburbs. It is bordered by Paris, Seine-Saint-Denis and Val-de-Marne to the e ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

) is a New York-based entrepreneur who has founded two

geolocation Geopositioning, also known as geotracking, geolocalization, geolocating, geolocation, or geoposition fixing, is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object. Geopositioning yields a set of Geographic coordinate s ...

technology companies: InfoSplit, Inc. and Mexens Technology Inc. (now called

Navizon Navizon, Inc. is a provider of location-based services and products. Navizon was an early developer of technology that makes it possible to determine the geographic position of a mobile device using as reference the location of cell phone towers a ...

). Houri has designed

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

and cellular positioning technologies, and has testified as an expert witness on location-based technology in LICRA vs. Yahoo!. Houri was educated in Paris before graduating with an MS degree in both engineering and computer science from the National Polytechnic Institute of Toulouse, France in 1992. He moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1996 to take a job designing financial software. In 1999, Houri founded InfoSplit Inc., a pioneer in IP

, which identifies the geographic location of an Internet user. Houri designed and patented some of the technology that is now commonly used to geolocate website visitors. Houri’s patent is now co-owned by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

and Quova. In 2000,

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

was sued by two French anti-racism groups demanding that Yahoo! France prevent French web users from accessing English-language auction sites offering

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

memorabilia, which are illegal in France. Yahoo! argued in court that it was technically impossible to block only French web surfers from the site. Houri was called to testify on behalf of the plaintiff groups and demonstrated that geolocation technology could be used to block at least 90% of France-based users from accessing the offending Yahoo! sites. The court ruled for the plaintiffs and ordered Yahoo! to block French web users from accessing the unlawful content. In 2004, Houri sold InfoSplit to Quova, a larger California-based geolocation company. Shortly thereafter, he launched Mexens Technology, Inc. and created Navizon, a wireless positioning system for handheld devices that triangulates signals from

cellular tower A cell site, cell tower, or cellular base station is a cellular-enabled mobile device site where antennas and electronic communications equipment are placed (typically on a radio mast, tower, or other raised structure) to create a cell, or adjac ...

and/or

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

access points to pinpoint the user’s location. Navizon is based on a collaborative database compiled by users with GPS devices who collect positional information of Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular signals.

References

*'' Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World'' (2006)
New York Times - Business -''Apple to open IPhone programming to outsiders''

* ttps://gizmodo.com/gadgets/notag/iphone-faux+gps-hack-works-and-is-awesome-301459.php/ Gizmodo September 2007 -''Navizon faux GPS Hacks for IPhone works and is awesome''

External links

Navizon Official Website

Mexens Technology Official Website

Cyril Houri's Official Blog

Quova Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Houri, Cyril 1969 births Living people People from Meudon French engineers