Google stacks android#
Google stacks mac#

A more useful way of looking at it is that received signal strength represents the rough distance to the cell tower. So a cell phone always tries to lock onto the strongest signal so that it can transmit using the least amount of power. The farther away a cell tower is, the more power it takes your phone transmit to it. Your phone uses the received signal strength to save batteries. Each of those wedges is a 'cell' (which is where the technology got its name.)Įach of the radios serving those cells transmits using a certain amount of power - the closer you are to the tower, the stronger the signal your phone receives, and vice versa. Cellular tower antennas are directional, with each tower serving roughly three different areas you can think of them as three pie-shaped wedges with the cell tower at the center of the pie. It broadcasts its identity constantly so that phones can connect to it as they move around.

Google stacks android#

Android uses cell tower geolocation to estimate your current location.Įach cell tower has a set of ID numbers that identifies them to the phones. That means that the phone is in communication with the local cell towers. You disabled WiFi and GPS, but you still have cellular data turned on. For more, refer to the Google Support article about opting out. In order to opt out you would rename your network Home_nomap or D-Link_nomap. For example, you connect to the SSID 'Home' or 'D-Link' for your WiFi at home. Your SSID is the 'name' of the network that you have chosen or have been given. Though this may be the case, you can opt out of your involvement in this program by appending _nomap to the end of your SSID. You've got other people's phones, the phones of passers-by, and even Google's own Street View cars to contend with. Thanks to martinstoeckli for this information.Īlthough turning off this 'feature' on your phone seems like the best way to prevent your BSSID from being added to the database, this isn't necessarily the case. This 'feature' has been included since Android 4.3, and prior versions of the Android OS do not include this feature. Better check your settings if you were unaware: I saw in the comments questions about whether or not Android phones will receive location data even with WiFi turned OFF. Sadly, even if you get a new router and keep any and all Android devices away from it, they will still be able to approximate your location based on the cell towers your phone connects with (or maybe even your neighbor's AP!), but it won't be nearly as accurate. So it's not that the ISP is giving Google the location of their routers, it's that your phone has already helped to build a database of the Access Points around you, and Google uses this data for geolocation.

In your case, your AP is sending beacons advertising its BSSID, and because it is already in Google's database, Google Maps knows where you are based on the location of that AP. So, essentially, when you ARE using WiFi and GPS, Google's database of BSSIDs is updated with a geographic location associated with that BSSID, as you've assumed. The BSSID operates on a lower layer as the IP stack, you don't even have to be connected to an access point to receive these broadcasts. It is therefore 'public viewable' if the BSSID broadcast is enabled, which is the default for most access points.

Google stacks mac#

A BSSID is like the MAC address of a access point that gets broadcasted by that access point.

Google and others like Apple and Skyhook build a Database which links WLAN BSSIDs to a geographic location. Taken from “How does Google Maps estimate my location without GPS?”: Google uses BSSID information from your WLAN Access Point to get an approximation of where you are located, even with GPS and WiFi turned off.