ichnaea VS MozStumbler

The rather troubling part of this announcement in a GitHub issue is that this nugget comes out in a seemingly innocuous comment[1]:

>> Firefox still uses MLS for `browser.region.network.url`; will that also move to Google Location Services?

> This endpoint will be migrated to another service (classify-client) that will return the expected response. We'll adjust DNS entries when it's time to make that move so firefox won't see any difference.

What exactly is this "classify-client" service?

Note also this led me to discover for the first time that this is a thing[2]:

> Geolocation for default search engine

> In order to set the right default search engine for your location, Firefox will perform a geolocation lookup once by contacting Mozilla's servers and store the country-level result locally. This connection happens on the first start of Firefox – in case you want to prohibit that, you will have to preconfigure the browser and set the browser.search.geoip.url preference to a blank string.

Also related is [3].

[1]: https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/2065#issuecomment-...

[2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...

[3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/iq27wa/disabling_l...

I don't know what WiGLE users do with the data, but the WiGLE admins sold Wi-Fi location data to Microsoft to bootstrap Bing Maps back in the day.

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 once Firefox OS was retired, there wasn't much need for MLS. However, 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 stumbling 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 privacy-preserving way to do that.

For more information about MLS, check out https://location.services.mozilla.com/

Google mainly makes a search engine deal and pays Mozilla to use Google Location services rather than Mozilla's. Google doesn't control the development of Firefox, or its browser engine Gecko (at least directly, they do maniplulate the market so other browsers are forced to implement their stuff, Manifest v3 itself being an example).

The same is possible with bluetooth. Source: Mozilla Location Services

Tower Collector, as an app, collects for both https://opencellid.org/ and https://location.services.mozilla.com/ . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla\_Location\_Service

I had used Google's Geolocation API and Mozilla Location Service in the past.

There are location services that use the strength of nearby wifi, and Bluetooth beacons to guess where you are by comparing what you phone sees with a massive database, such as the Mozilla Location Services (link) but they won't work if you are in the middle of nowhere.

echo "0000000100101000110000000,0111110110100110110111110 0100010100110011110100010,0100010111000110110100010 0100010110011110010100010,0111110101010001010111110 0000000101010101010000000,1111111110111010111111111 0101110010100010011011010,0111101111101111110001000 1001010100000000011001101,0010001110100100011111100 1001100101101000000000010,1011001011111000011011100 0001000101101110000001110,1111011010011011001001010 0001110010100010000000000,1111111100110111011101001 0000000101110001010101111,0111110111100101011100100 0100010110011000000000001,0100010111011000011011111 0100010100001110000000000,0111110111111010010011010 0000000100000010100001100" | nc -4u -w1 location.services.mozilla.com 9876

This means that MLS falls back to using the sender's IP address to determine the location. So it being hundreds of kilometers off is definitely in the realm of possibilities. Does this device have wifi? Is it turned on?

One source of location data are wifi access points. Geoclue sends the MAC addresses and signal strengths of the access points that your system sees at the moment to a service operated by Mozilla https://location.services.mozilla.com/. That service uses that data to calculate your approximate location based on a database of access point locations. So if you're using the same access point now that you used in your place, and if the Mozilla database still has the old location for that access point, that would explain why you're getting the old location.

It ostensibly functions by talking to other providers, such as Mozilla Location Services (MLS) to do the exact same process. So you're just trusting Mozilla (and others) with your information rather than Google.

I don't know what WiGLE users do with the data, but the WiGLE admins sold Wi-Fi location data to Microsoft to bootstrap Bing Maps back in the day.

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 once Firefox OS was retired, there wasn't much need for MLS. However, 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 stumbling 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 privacy-preserving way to do that.

For more information about MLS, check out https://location.services.mozilla.com/