I
discovered that the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Microsoft Windows phones constantly send geolocation/GPS and wifi router information back up to Apple, Google and Microsoft. The iPhone and Windows phones do this even when the user has chosen to turn GPS/Location Services off. Since my release of this research
through the Wall Street Journal, Apple and Google have both
testified in front of Congress and all three are now involved in
various lawsuits due to potential invasion of privacy. Besides the companies tracking the locations of all of these phones, I've created a tool that exposes not only the GPS data, but the wifi data Google and Microsoft have been collecting from virtually all Android and Windows devices and Google street view cars, using them essentially as global wardriving machines. When the phone detects any wireless network, encrypted or not, it sends the BSSID (MAC address) of the router along with signal strength, and most importantly, GPS coordinates up to the mothership.
My tool allows you to ping those databases and find exactly where any wifi router in the world is located. You can enter any router BSSID/MAC address to locate the exact physical location of the router.
Try my Google tool here and my
Microsoft tool here.