WiGLE: Wireless Network Mapping

skowalak 281 days ago |

A similar project that also tracks cell towers and bluetooth beacons in addition to WiFi is https://beacondb.net . Since Mozilla Location Services shut down they have been a good alternative for geolocation and they are public domain. Unfortunately, data dumps are currently not available, though.

eliaspro 281 days ago | |

The great thing about BeaconDB: the API-compatibility to MozillaLocationService. So apps just need to update their endpoint to continue working.

Havoc 281 days ago |

Looking at areas I'm familiar with this is picking up a ton of non-fixed APs - in fact more mobile than fixed. Guessing that's cellphones with tethering on?

typpilol 281 days ago | |

I've done wigle for a while

A ton of it is cars with built in hotspots. The other is mobile hotspots left on while on the highway.

move-on-by 281 days ago |

If you want to be excluded from this - as well as from: Google, Microsoft, Apple lists- you have to add ‘_nomap’ to the end of your wifi name.

eigencoder 281 days ago | |

I thought it was _optout_nomap (the _optout for Microsoft, _nomap for Google/Apple)

move-on-by 281 days ago | | |

Hmm... I was under the impression that MS had added support for `_nomap` as well somewhere... but now I'm not finding any references to that. I suppose at the end of the day, you have to trust that they even follow their opt out policy at all.

baby_souffle 281 days ago | | |

And you'd probably have to rotate out the MAC address and broadcast name. At this point, cat is out of the bag. I'm brand new network name and Mac address with the opt-out flags is only going to keep you out of the honest databases :(

xd1936 281 days ago |

See also: https://beacondb.net/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40895672

jjkaczor 281 days ago |

Man - I loved this "back-in-the-day", uh... 23-years ago...

acka 280 days ago | |

I feel you... Running NetStumbler as well as some other tools such as Kismet on a laptop using an Orinoco Wi-Fi PCMCIA card with special firmware / drivers which offered 'Monitor Mode', those were the days...

edm0nd 281 days ago | |

I still go around and war drive and upload em to WiGLE!

They make it really easy now. They even have an app you can download on your phone and just open up while driving and start logging and then it just uploads it to WiGLE when you hit stop.

supportengineer 281 days ago | | |

I believe that is Android-only

edm0nd 281 days ago | | |

Yup. I bought a refurb'd Pixel 7 Pro off eBay for $250 and installed it on there and just throw it in the car when I'm driving around.

adastra22 281 days ago | | |

Why would you do this?

jjkaczor 280 days ago | | |

Well - back then, it was "new and shiny" - now, I haven't done it myself the intervening decades.

If you are interested in radio/security, I could see it being an on-going thing. Myself, I rarely uploaded to WiGLE (just used it to peruse regions that were "unmapped") - but, these were also back in the "before-times" when ubiquitous cell network data connectivity was expensive - so, I did my mapping using an offline version of Microsoft MapPoint with NetStumbler on my laptop in combination with a VBScript interface I wrote that would drive MapPoint and visually display findings.

After posting this yesterday - I checked WiGLE for my home and office wifi networks - which have been around with the same SSID for 5+ years and they are not listed, so not many people are actively wardriving these days.

But - like any hobby, there are always a few people in the "long-tail".

adastra22 280 days ago | | |

What I mean is, you are actively choosing to collect and make available data that can be used to track people, to hack people, to deanonymize users, and even to harm others. This is literally crowdsourced spying on your neighbors. Why participate?

edm0nd 274 days ago | | |

because it's nerdy fun

nunobrito 281 days ago |

Thank you for sharing. Didn't knew it.