Wigle: Wireless Network Mapping

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

dp-hackernews

62 points

19 comments

wigle.netTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

Wireless NetworkingGeolocationData Mapping

Key topics

Wireless Networking

Geolocation

Data Mapping

The WiGLE project maps wireless networks worldwide, sparking nostalgia and discussion about its implications and related projects.

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01Story posted
Sep 24, 2025 at 8:10 AM EDT
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3 months ago
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Discussion (19 comments)

Showing 19 comments

jjkaczor

3 months ago

2 replies

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

edm0nd

3 months ago

2 replies

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

3 months ago

1 reply

I believe that is Android-only

edm0nd

3 months 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

3 months ago

2 replies

Why would you do this?

jjkaczor

3 months ago

1 reply

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

3 months 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

3 months ago

because it's nerdy fun

acka

3 months 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...

move-on-by

3 months ago

1 reply

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

3 months ago

1 reply

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

move-on-by

3 months ago

1 reply

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

3 months 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 :(

skowalak

3 months ago

1 reply

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

3 months ago

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

Havoc

3 months ago

1 reply

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

3 months 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.

xd1936

3 months ago

Jump to the original sources

Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.

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