Mozilla Location Service

Mozilla Location Service (MLS) is open, crowdsourced geolocation service based on publicly observable cell sites (and their cell IDs) and Wi-Fi access points.[1] The service is provided by Mozilla since 2013.[2]

In November 2015 MLS had collected more than 17 million unique cell networks and 427 million unique WiFi networks.[3] The mobile app Mozilla Stumbler for Android is available in the Google Play store[4] and on F-Droid.[5]

Mozilla does not collect the SSID name (e.g. "Simpson-family-wifi") from WiFi networks, but collects the BSSID (which is often the MAC address of the WiFi device).[6] To allow opt-out, Mozilla's client applications do not collect information about WiFi access points whose SSID is hidden or ends with the string "_nomap" (e.g. "Simpson-family-wifi_nomap").[7]

Mozilla publishes aggregated data set of cell locations (MLS Cell Network Export Data[8]) under a public domain license (CC-0).[6] Unlike the cell database, the raw WiFi database is not made public because the underlying data contains personally identifiable information from both the users uploading data and from the owners of WiFi devices.[6] However, Mozilla shares this proprietary data with its corporate partner Combain AB.[9]

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ "Mozilla’s Location Service pilot project provides geolocation lookups based on public cell tower and WiFi data". The Next Web. 2013-10-28. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
  2. ↑ "Combain Provides Cell-ID and WiFi Positioning to Mozilla (Podcast)". GPS Business News. 2015-03-10. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
  3. ↑ MLS stats, accessed November 2015
  4. ↑ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.mozstumbler Play store
  5. ↑ https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.mozilla.mozstumbler
  6. 1 2 3 https://wiki.mozilla.org/CloudServices/Location/FAQ
  7. ↑ Mozilla Location Service Opt-Out location.services.mozilla.com
  8. ↑ https://location.services.mozilla.com/downloads
  9. ↑ https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2015/03/06/combain-deal-helps-expand-mozilla-location-service/
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