How Wi-Fi Gives Away Your Location

Here’s how the “Wi-Fi positioning system” works: Your device scans nearby Wi-Fi access points and creates a list of them as well as their relative signal strength in your current location. It then contacts online servers that, essentially, contain a list of Wi-Fi access points around the world and their geographical locations.

The database doesn’t just include a list of Wi-FI access point names (SSIDs). The database includes the unique MAC addresses (BSSIDs) of those access points, which normally do not change—even if the Wi-Fi network’s visible name changes. By comparing this list of Wi-Fi networks near you to a known list of access points and their locations, Location Services can guess at your relevant location. And, by comparing the relative signal strengths of the various Wi-Fi networks, Location Services can triangulate your location and, often, precisely determine your location, just as if you were using GPS.

Devices might also download and cache some of this data. For example, if they know that you’re in a particular town, they might download and store Wi-Fi information in and around that town so that they can more easily find your location, even if you don’t have a network connection to check the database.

But Where Does the Wi-Fi Database Come From?

Over a decade ago, Google was gathering data about Wi-Fi networks using its Street View cars. While those cars were driving around and capturing photos of storefronts, houses, and roads, they were also scanning for nearby Wi-Fi networks and saving the Wi-Fi data for use with Location Services. But this applies to more than just Google—Apple, Microsoft, and other companies have their own Location Services systems.

Also, it’s not about Street View cars anymore. Google’s Street View cars no longer drive around scanning everyone’s Wi-Fi to keep its databases up to date. Instead, the Location Services software built into your devices continually sends data that keeps these databases up to date. For example, let’s say that you open Google Maps on an Android phone. You have a strong GPS signal—great, your phone knows where you are via GPS. Now, your phone scans your nearby wireless networks and uploads a list of them to Google’s Location Services database along with your current location.

Everyone using Location Services is continually updating the database with more current data. Of course, companies promise that this data is anonymous and not connected to any individual.

What About Privacy?

A Wi-Fi access point’s name and address is public by definition. Your wireless router is constantly broadcasting this information to any device that cares to listen nearby. Again, the databases just get a list of nearby networks, their unique identifiers, and their physical locations. They don’t get any information about who is using these networks or what data is being transferred over WI-Fi. They don’t get any passphrases people need to connect to these networks.

Modern operating systems prevent apps and websites from accessing this data unless you give them permission. A website or an app can’t just view the list of nearby Wi-Fi networks and do this calculation on its own. It has to ask your browser or operating system for access to your location, and you can turn down the request. You remain in control.

(Of course, desktop software that has full access to your operating system—traditional Windows desktop applications, for example—could access the Wi-Fi data directly. Websites, mobile apps, and apps written using Windows 10’s UWP framework are restricted from accessing this information.)