9 ms·
My money is on a wifi SSID that matches the one used by thieves or a heavily-trafficked location the victims all pass through. My company moved ~5 blocks and i
by mapgrep 11y ago
My money is on a wifi SSID that matches the one used by thieves or a heavily-trafficked location the victims all pass through.
My company moved ~5 blocks and it really screwed up the map on my phone (which I use to get around the city) for several months. My company had left the network SSID the same in the old location, so that no one had to re-configure their wifi. Even with GPS on, my phone was always convinced it was in the old location up the block, and this would persist even when I was out on the street, until I walked around a bit.
There are companies (presumably Skyhook is one of them) who drive around mapping SSIDs to physical locations. The problem is that SSIDs can move or be duplicated elsewhere.
The article says of one of the couple "at one point he reset their router, and changed the frequency at which it broadcasts; it didn’t solve the problem." It does not say if he changed the SSID.
Theoretically, location is often determined using not just one but several nearby SSIDs, a sort of triangulation. Another possibility here is that there are multiple nearby SSIDs around this home that match the SSIDs surrounding some other area tied to the victims.
- JonnieCache 11y agoI thought it was the MAC addresses of routers which were used for mapping, not SSIDs. Duplicate SSIDs are very common.
- mapgrep 11y agoGood point. My understanding is that both SSID and MAC address are typically used as inputs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_positioning_system
- JonnieCache 11y agoI guess it's not exactly difficult for the likes of google to remove the millions of 'Netgear' SSIDs from their dataset.
- lucb1e 11y agoI always wondered how it would handle lesser known systems, like the SSID "Train's on-board WiFi" (Dutch: "WiFi in de trein") that we have in the Netherlands. There are not a million trains, but they do appear in a million places. Like with airlines, I'd think they notice, or have a script to detect, "oh we have a bunch of locations many kilometers apart" and then remove them, but since I don't use WiFi location services (I don't agree to share my location with Google 24/7) I don't actually know.
- phantom784 11y agoI had this problem on a train in the US. My phone insisted that I was in Boston the whole trip, when I was actually several states away.
- lorenzhs 11y agoThe display name is often referred to as ESSID while the MAC address is also called the BSSID. Confusion!
- 8_hours_ago 11y agoThe Google Maps Geolocation API only uses the access point's MAC address (aka BSSID). https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/intro#wifi_access_point_object https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation...
- mikeash 11y agoAn amusing example of this sort of problem shows up sometimes on airplanes with onboard WiFi. If the phone doesn't get a GPS lock right away (common when you're in a metal tube) then it may show the position based on the mapped location for the hotspot MAC address, which is often at a completely different airport. Obviously, Skyhook isn't driving around mapping airliners, but I think these days they have the mobile devices themselves do the mapping, by phoning home with the WiFi hotspots it sees while out and about.
- lucb1e 11y ago> I think these days they have the mobile devices themselves do the mapping, by phoning home with the WiFi hotspots it sees while out and about. That thought is correct. Google has been doing this for years, popping up an agree-to-continue like screen on Android phones on which everyone clicks "sure, I just want to use GPS now" and then uploads every place they ever go to Google. Mozilla is working on their own version of this to create a variant of a more open nature: https://location.services.mozilla.com https://location.services.mozilla.com
- kuschku 11y agoAnd it’s horrible when no one activates it, and you’re the first to do so – every minute your phone will activate WiFi, scan, activate GPS, get a lock, and upload the data. Battery is empty in a few hours. But, after doing so for a few days in a row, your battery consumption goes down again, probably because it has mapped enough for now.
- egypturnash 11y agoOr maybe because it's not seeing many new SSIDs because you mostly go to the same four or five places in the same routes.
- kuschku 11y agoThat’s what I meant - it has mapped enough around my home that it doesn’t see new SSIDs anymore. In the end, I turned off Google’s location service anyway.
- mmagin 11y agoWell, BSSID, not the easily-changed ESSID (as commented below.) Presumably some manufacturer of ultra-cheap wifi gear isn't properly setting a unique BSSID range into the units they make, and some stolen-phone operation has the same BSSID as these folks do.
- mentat 11y agoThey are modifiable in software too...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ljbha007 11y agoYou maybe getting the point there. This incident sounds a lot like an inaccurate Wifi locating result. Or someone in a large stolen-phone operation has been using a randomly picked MAC address to confuse the Find-My-Phone softwares. That's a lot easier to do. I bet someone at Google or Skyhook could look into the Mac address to see if there are any abnormalities for that particular one. I really hope Sherlock Holmes will be there to resolve the mystery.
- olemartinorg 11y agoYup, it's BSSID. I took my router with me when i moved back home from university (and i changed the SSID first thing). For about a year my iPad would think it was still at university, and sometimes when i used it to chat with friends on Facebook they would reply "Oh, you're back in town?? Come visit!".
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoThis seems like a stretch. SSIDs aren't whats stored here, its the mac address of the access point that's stored. There are millions of SSID called "Netgear" for example. You can't use the name as a unique value, so mac addresses it is. Regardless, phones are smart enough to understand that GPS is authoratitive, AGPS second, and wifi/IP address as last. If GPS/AGPS says Chicago, but the wifi says Atlanta, the phone should consider Chicago authoritative. I also believe its not the access point youre near, but a relationship of access points nearby that gives you a location. So if you see three mac addresses, all three are looked up to do a lookup and act as a sanity check against people recently moving and taking their wifi router with them. I imagine the real reason will be something more prosaic than some GPS shattering bug. Neighbors running a criminal ring perhaps, duplicate mac address, random idiots messing with these poor people, some bug in a popular 'find my phone' app, a geoIP bug, a local craigslist scammer using their address for whatever reason, etc. Sadly, the article doesn't specify what service is being used to track the phones or really any technical details, so its difficult to really say whats going on here. They really should just buy a new access point to be safe (might help). Eventually you'll get a hothead that won't buy this story and that might turn out badly for them. Can't wait for this mystery to be solved. Hopefully, someone from Google or Apple will reach out and investigate this from their end.
- emilecantin 11y agoMinor nitpick: AGPS, or Assisted GPS is actually almost the same as GPS. The only difference is that it gets the Almanach data off the Internet, instead of the satellites themselves (the satellites are constantly broadcasting that data, but it takes a few minutes to download it all).
- TickleSteve 11y agoAGPS isnt similar to GPS... it is GPS. Like you say the almanac (and ephemeris) data is preloaded over an IP network to provide for a better TTFF (Time-To-First-Fix). Also since the locations of the currently associated mobile tower is known, that is used as a seed for the GPS fix (or even a crude triangulation based on the signal strength from multiple towers).
- xsmasher 11y agoCurious if your phone was Android or iOS? I know that iOS dropped skyhook in 2010, and always assumed that their new database would self-correct faster due to feedback from phones that had GPS + wifi turned on.
- soylentcola 11y agoSomething similar happened to me. I moved maybe 5 blocks a couple years ago and for the first couple of weeks my location-based stuff would have trouble deciding where I was. Eventually the combination of GPS and cellular triangulation must've forced the SSID database to update but for a little while it was a minor annoyance.
- Outdoorsman 11y agoI've lived on the same 200 acres for 22 years...remote, rustic...you cannot GPS me (find me) even if I give you the state, county, and mailing address...G-maps has roads and features mislabeled all around me...at one point part of the land I live on was labeled "Public Use", meaning open to hunters...that's the only thing I ever bothered to get changed...I sort of like things the way they are... My point is, anything is possible...tech (especially apps) is still very new, despite what we think we coders think we've accomplished... Would like to know how long they've lived in that house...don't think the article provided that info... Spoofed IP > wifi network improperly linked, or worse, aggregated > lying in a database somewhere as a reference point...just a possibility...
- wvenable 11y agoUnfortunately, it's not likely that there is anything they can do to change this. This is just a record in a database somewhere now and until that record is changed (and propagated everywhere) this will continue to happen for them.
- bigiain 11y agoI was vaguely expecting the location to be somehow "significant", like this one that anybody who's ever done much geolocation/mapping work probably immediately recognises if they've used data without sufficient validation: https://www.google.com/maps/place/0%C2%B000'00.0%22N+0%C2%B000'00.0%22E/@0,0,5z https://www.google.com/maps/place/0%C2%B000'00.0%22N+0%C2%B0...
- wang_li 11y agoIt seems much more likely that there is some bogus location data set somewhere that improperly links SIDS and GPS coordinates or filters fail and result some index into a GPS table that happens to correspond to this couple's home. If I were these two people, I'd contact the local police department every single time anyone shows up at their house and require that the PD fill out a report of some kind and keep it in a single case/incident/folder. Then put a sign on the door that says: > Before knocking contact the police department at ###-###-#### and ask about incident #XYZ. The get off our property. It's bullshit that police are coming to the door and dragging them outside while trying to determine if a search warrant is in order.
- chad_strategic 11y ago---> It's bullshit that police are coming to the door and dragging them outside while trying to determine if a search warrant is in order. I think this is the biggest issue! Their rights where violated.
- ghshephard 11y agoWhat rights are you referring to? The police seem to have done everything correctly. These were individuals who were being detained pursuant to an investigation of an ongoing crime. The police did not search the inside of the house without a warrant - though, it's unclear why not - if they had strong belief that there was a crime in progress, they had every legal right to do so. I guess the only thing in question is whether "missing child" was precise enough to be upgraded to "crime" in this jurisdiction. I think that, given the evidence, the police did everything correctly; being detained pursuant to an investigation isn't a great inconvenience (though, some accommodation should be made to allow people to use washroom facilities if investigation is extensive - just obviously not in the house under investigation.)
- asciimo 11y agoSoftware that puts a blinking dot on a map should not be considered probable cause.
- bigiain 11y agoI'd guess MAC address is more important that SSID. (If this were me, I'd want to somehow covertly install that router at Google/Apple/Skyhook/the-local-police-station, I suspect that'd pretty quickly get someone to give-a-shit enough to solve the problem...)
- cmdrfred 11y agoTo my knowledge this is not done by SSID but by MAC. You could spoof the router with a wifi pineapple. Put it in a church.
- Spooky23 11y agoYour smartphone is a sensor that collects and provides that data to Apple/Google. For an iPhone, I would try doing a backup/restore to isolate the problem.