My first WiGLE upload was in 2013. I like collecting the data about my local areas, if big tech and the government can why can't I? I also upload and click allow for commerical use. I believe this data ends up in OpenStreetMap? It's been a while. I'm primarily interested in interacting with the data programmatically to see if I can suss out anything "interesting". The addition of Bluetooth was a major boon to that aspect, interesting to see what devices change over time in particular locations or if certain devices show up in multiple areas. Things like that. I'm a hobbyist programmer so actually having data to interact with his nice.
But probably one of the most unintended benefits I get from WiGLE is in exercise, it encourages me to go down different roads when I run or to take a right instead of a left when walking and listening to podcasts or to go that extra step to push a little further.
I'm a big fan of this application and it's the only one that has followed me to all my different devices over the years.
Edit: I should also point out that I originally found WiGLE to scan and keep track of open or 'openable' WiFi networks. I still remember when one could rather reliably count on finding an open network if they were willing to look a little.
Oh man.... Wigle is something I haven't thought about in a very long time. Was quite active between 2005 and 2010ish. It was so cool to drive around my local city and submit data to see dots on the map where there weren't any previously. Even had a netbook (remember those terrible things?) running linux with a couple antenna in the back of my motorcycle for a while.
But it's clear that the data isn't being collected very much any more. Apparently I have enough "points" from way back in the day that I'm still reasonably highly ranked. Also looked up my SSID and the dots are at my old home, when I moved over 3 years ago.
I had a kickass wardriving rig back in the day. A dedicated netbook with kismet, gpsd, and a kismet script i hacked together before they had a plugin framework that would alert me on certain ssid probes, which would reliably tell me of the presence of police MCTs thus police cars (the mcts used motorola airmobile iirc). Was also really fun compiling stats knowing how often police would drive past my house, and knowing which vehicles they were.
It’s probably better in metro areas but these days it’s woefully out of date in smaller cities (eg the nearby town of ~300k is super hit and miss for my red team ops.)
Fortunately, Apple’s geolocation API is highly useful and super up-to-date, albeit a mess of undocumented APIs. I have a hacked up Python script that I am utterly unable to get running on anything other than the original Linux VM it was developed on. I only wish it dumped elevation so I could narrow down apartment locations better.
Netstumbler forums: amish_something gave me a harsh lesson on using the search function.
I stumbled the USAF dorms near NW Texas and got a very verbal warning not to send active probes to get routers to beacon out of cycle. Advice: kismet for passive listening and an Orinoco wLAN chipset.
I'd assumed truckers and pilots would get the most Wiggle points.
>I stumbled the USAF dorms near NW Texas and got a very verbal warning
Wait, did you just... drive up to the dorms? Did you get pulled over by an MP or something?
I'm not in the military, but I've definitely at least once had to give someone a warning to get off my personal wifi. (I'm not a communist... get your own!!)
Oh boy, if you want to take this to another (arguably more useful) level, you should check out StreetComplete[0]. It gamifies filling in data in OpenStreetMaps:
Which makes a bit of interesting observation about what the map is actually showing. Mostly density of wifi networks for this subset of users but partly their movement patterns too.
What are some good wifi cards for "wardriving" nowadays? Something USB, with atleast AC standard (2.4 and 5ghz support), and with a good linux support (monitor mode, etc.)?
What I do is get a couple of Androids (preferably different versions, not even necessary different vendors. The difference / efficiency in WiFi & GPS implementations are enormous.), install Wiggle and off you go.
No messing with GPSD, no tuning, absolutely nothing just supply power and you are ready to rock.
Additional benefit: you also detect cell towers & bluetooth if you wish to do so.
For extra good results, drive... slow... I use a scooter that allows me to comfortably drive 20km/h (15 in Freedoms) with a plastic case on the back with a handful of phones and can easily get about 80 / 90% of the SSIDs.
I VERY seldomly wiggle, am in the 600 - 700 range.
The problem with androids is, that you don't get monitor mode (no packet capture, no hidden networks, no number of clients, etc. you get with kismet), and that a single scan (2.4+5g) lasts multiple seconds, compared to a laptop with 4 usb dongles, where 1 can hope just between channels 1, 6 and 11 (where the most APs are), and the other three are used for the other.
External wifi cards are horrible nowadays... rtl8821XX sucks, barely works as a client mode.. mediatek somewhat works, and I didn't try the others (yet)
I don't know what WiGLE users do with the data, but I read the WiGLE admins sold Wi-Fi location data to Microsoft to bootstrap Bing Maps back in the day: https://wigle.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=586
I helped bootstrap Mozilla's Location Service (MLS) to support geolocation on Firefox OS without Google Location Services. Mozilla even had its own Wi-Fi "wardriving/stumbling" app (MozStumbler https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler) and an opt-in stumbler in Firefox Android. But after Firefox OS was retired, Mozilla didn't have have a need for MLS. That said, Mozilla still runs a Wi-Fi geolocation service open to other projects (like GNOME's Geoclue service).
Mozilla also publishes cell tower location data and shares with the OpenCellID project. I worked with Mozilla's privacy and security teams to see if we could publish the Wi-Fi location data, but we didn't find a practical, privacy-preserving way to do that.
Upload it to Wigle and flaunt your ranking to other war drivers :)
And demos. Get an audience, setup a PI with Kismet, show the audience their phones are permanently broadcasting ALL the SSIDs their phones have ever connected to, enjoy the stunned faces.
Pick one phone's list of SSIDs (make sure you agreed with the "victim" that this is ok) and map the list of SSIDs with Wigle to locations.
I scraped a ton of Nintendo 3DS street pass relays from all over the world and used some homebrew code[1] on a pi to rotate to a new item in the list once every few minutes, which provided me an endless amount of street pass game data. Nintendo shut the relay servers down in early 2018 though, effectively killing the homepass community, so that's all in the past now. Too bad because my kids are sitting right here playing 3DS and they can only streetpass with each other.
Good question. When I used WiGLE few years ago , i wanted to know if there was 1. free wifi in my area, 2. possibility to find geo-location of router from bssid, and 3. if there was local community wifi network. Found out that there was not enough public data, so i went to wardriving with WiGLE (private). Answer was 1. No 2. WiGLE is not very precise 3. No.
In red teaming: it’s helpful for identifying client sites based on repeating ESSIDs at different locations or ESSIDs being broadcast by the same BSSID manufacturer or controller. Saves me a drive around town sometimes.
Not sure how useful that is to everyone else though…
Edit: I should also point out that I originally found WiGLE to scan and keep track of open or 'openable' WiFi networks. I still remember when one could rather reliably count on finding an open network if they were willing to look a little.