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Data is crowdsourced and contributed by users. On a much larger scale, Apple and Google collect data from iOS and Android devices to power their WiFi/mobile tower based geolocation services.

Android's Location Services: https://support.google.com/android/answer/3467281#location_a...

iOS's Location Services: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102515

In fact, Google provides it as a paid API: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation..., but you require BSSID's and not just SSID names to try to curb abuse.



Mozilla also has such a service although I believe they're deprecating it. You can still query it today, but as a privacy measure you need to include the MAC of 3+ SSIDs to get location info, since otherwise you could check the SSIDs from probe scans of passerby to locate their homes.


Google street view cars also collect WiFi data (or at least used to): https://europe.googleblog.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-goog...




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