What happened near Spokane in BeaconDB?
from otter@lemmy.ca to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 03 Oct 06:02
https://lemmy.ca/post/52715351

beacondb.net/map/

Is that some kind of error, or was a bunch of data imported somehow?

For those unfamiliar with beacondb:

A privacy focused aGPS service written in Rust.

beaconDB aims to be an alternative to Mozilla Location Services that offers public domain dumps of its WiFi database.

When Mozilla Location Services shut down, it wasn’t able to publish the massive amount of access points its users had collected due to legal and privacy concerns. beaconDB obfuscates the data it releases so that it is not possible to reasonably estimate the location of a single device.

Data can be contributed by using apps such as NeoStumbler or TowerCollector1.

NOTE: beaconDB is still in development! Data exports are not ready yet. Some data is not yet obfuscated.

#nostupidquestions

threaded - newest

individual@toast.ooo on 03 Oct 06:15 next collapse

white supremacy explosion

cabbage@piefed.social on 03 Oct 08:21 next collapse

There’s a similar weird thing going on just north of Trondheim in the middle of Norway (and the middle of nowhere, really). I have no idea what it’s about.
@beacondb@mapstodon.space (not sure if Mastodon mentions work from PieFed)

niktemadur@lemmy.world on 03 Oct 13:12 next collapse

Sometimes the radar weather in some areas will glitch out, I’ve seen a large swath of digital dots spread like a fan all over some cities. The image refreshes every couple of minutes, I believe, usually the glitch goes away after a couple of cycles.

But what is glitching and why, I have no idea.

otter@lemmy.ca on 04 Oct 07:21 collapse

In case the tags don’t work from Piefed, I’ll try as well

@beacondb@mapstodon.space

janNatan@lemmy.ml on 03 Oct 09:17 next collapse

Where did you think the dot com bubble popped?

sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 03 Oct 12:28 next collapse

Wait does having your SSID in one of these databases affect your privacy?

Longpork3@lemmy.nz on 03 Oct 13:14 collapse

SSID, probably not, unless you use personal details in it, like “johnsmithwifi5Ghz”. Hardware details of the router providing that ssid could potentially be used to geolocate you by device fingerprints though if compared to logs from website data breaches.

Justoboy98@lemmy.ca on 03 Oct 23:38 next collapse

What is BeaconDB??

otter@lemmy.ca on 04 Oct 01:00 collapse

It’s a project that’s compiling a map of wifi/cell tower/bluetooth locations for location services. GPS doesn’t work well in some cases (indoors, remote locations, areas with tall buildings) and so big companies have built similar databases to get accurate location information. For the most part, those ones are proprietary / private. This project is intended to be a public / openly licensed version of that, while also processing the data to strip out potentially private information

Murazaki@lemmy.balamb.fr on 04 Oct 07:35 collapse

My best explanation : Weather balloons.