This is not tower triangulation.<p>Android searches for access points even when wifi is turned off. If anyone (with GPS enabled) uses that wifi with any google services the bssid will end up in their database. Also if the google car has been nearby it has recorded the presence of the wifi access point at that location [1].<p>Before you freak out: Apple and Microsoft also use access point information for positioning, although not as successfully.<p>[1] <a href="https://googleblog.blogspot.se/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-update.html" rel="nofollow">https://googleblog.blogspot.se/2010/05/wifi-data-collection-...</a>
Mozilla built a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi, cell, and Bluetooth network locations, collected by volunteers running an Android "stumbler/war-driving" app. I helped start this project for Firefox OS, which is mostly defunct but the Mozilla Location Service (MLS) is still used for Firefox Nightly and DevEdition on the desktop. :-) Here is a zoomable map of the location data coverage:<p><a href="https://location.services.mozilla.com/map" rel="nofollow">https://location.services.mozilla.com/map</a><p>Mozilla exchanges the cell location data with the OpenCellID project. Mozilla's cell database is available for download here:<p><a href="https://location.services.mozilla.com/downloads" rel="nofollow">https://location.services.mozilla.com/downloads</a><p>For privacy reasons, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth databases are not currently downloadable, but they can be queried through a web service API:<p><a href="https://location.services.mozilla.com/api" rel="nofollow">https://location.services.mozilla.com/api</a>
GPS for a long time haven't been used as the only source of location, to some extent it can now be considered a "2nd fiddle" to INS since solid state INS sensors are very good these days.
The phone receives location information from wifi and more importantly it gets location messages from cell towers, and it uses dead reckoning[0] using it's INS sensors.
[0]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning</a><p>If you want "privacy" turn off the location services, or your phone, if you want privacy don't take your phone with you.<p>That said this isn't some "conspiracy" Google actually states when you enable background location services that this will be on all the time even when GPS and the wireless network are explicitly disabled, IIRC even in airplane mode the location background service can be operational without violating FCC regulations.
If you want to stop your network from being scanned by Google street view or stop Microsoft doing whatever they do, you can add strings to your ssid.<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3g3xyu/for_wifi_ms.." rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/3g3xyu/for_wifi_ms...</a>.
Wifi mapping is the method by which google has no idea where I am. My roommate moved across the country and moved in with me, and android thinks I'm at his old house whenever I connect to his wifi router, even with GPS enabled, and even having installed OpenWRT and changed the ssid of the router. It's pretty maddening.
I had someone from Google (young guy, summer job stuff) come into my office park and map out wi-fi points asking us if this office is still where the company I work for works at. Google has the resources to utilize HUMINT. That's how Google knows where you are.<p>This guy said he does this in a bunch of cities, driving around the geographic area of the USA where I work in. Very interesting to learn about.<p>Edit: I am not located anywhere near where Google has an office, so for him to stop by was interesting by itself.<p>Edit 2: grammar.
It was possible for long. Many years back my low IQ Nokia phone had no GPS or wifi but maps were pretty accurate using just feel phone tower tringulation.
If I understood correctly, android downloads nearby BSSIDs with corresponding Geoposition when internet connectivity is available, to use them when no connectivity is available.<p>It should be possible to reconstruct google's BSSID database, right?
This was not publicly known before.<p>To my knowledge this Google trick was first discovered by the researcher Samy Kamkar (<a href="https://samy.pl/mapxss" rel="nofollow">https://samy.pl/mapxss</a>), though the tool no longer works.<p>When the tool used to work, I tested it using my home router address and it accurately located me. Then, I moved to another house, and the location remained being my old home. Then, after a couple of weeks, it got updated.<p>I think in the final product the resulting location is not only based off one WiFi address. It might try to crossvalidate using the multiple addresses you can see.
From the comments section of the top-voted answer:<p>> Something you didn't mention: when a Google-car goes around taking pictures for StreetView it also maps the location and all wifi networks name. So taking a new router with a new network name from a different ISP might work, but only until they come near your house to update their pictures...
> - Bakuriu<p>I am not sure how this makes me feel :-|
Can you trace your cellphone-to-cellphone contacts, and conclude where a User is by comparing his environment?
I always imagined for fun a "underground" internet consisting of multicellular social-organism, that traffics data by handing packets over to another organism that is most likely to meet the user.
In Reverse this approach could be used to trace a users propable location by finding in which social-organism s/he/it resides, and if that organism is showing its usual behaviour. (e.g. The morning Bus-To-Work always consists of a base set of workers and a set of drivers, the driver remaining constantly in it, the user has for last 2 years entered this organism at the same time and left at the same station, thus the packet can be entrusted to this organism, who will deliver it to the most likely organism the user contacted next).
I hate suggesting regulation, but devices should be required to have physical switches for cams, mics, and radios. The gap between what the consumer thinks their gear is doing and what it's actually doing has become far too broad.
Most geolocation methods make sense to me, but I've yet to figure out how Google knows the location of my desktop PC, both home and work PCs, with greater accuracy than just city.<p>Neither has Wi-Fi.