Noob questions: WiGle basics and real-time monitoring
Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:30 pm
OSINT enthusiast here: I'm entirely new to WiGle, only learned about "wardriving" today, but would appreciate clarification to a few issues that piqued my interest. I'm not much of a techie, but keen to understanding the basics:
- Basic question: is all your data, and all the APs on your map only collected by wardriving? I tried reading through your FAQ, but couldn't find a definite answer to this. Do you have any other means of collecting these data points? It's difficult to believe there are so many wardriving enthusiasts around the world: to create this amount of data, you'd need to have hundreds of thousands of users, no?
- How do you keep the map updated? I checked some buildings I am familiar with, and the APs appeared several years old (I know the APs have different names these days). Is it just because no one has been wardriving in the neighbourhood in years? (By the way, what is the widest radius of advanced wardriving equipment? To capture an AP do you have to drive the street just adjacent to the building?)
- Once an AP has been logged, will it be there for eternity even if in real life the AP device was moved or destroyed? Because if so, this would create "ghost" data which would accumulate and populate the map within years, rendering the data obsolete.
- The search function only allows you to use by year, not by month. It would be great if it was possible to identify new APs created in, say, over the past month. Likewise, a sudden disappearance of APs could be a signal of something bigger at move.
- Sometimes on the map you see dotted lines that are straight as arrow, even up to dozens or hundreds of kilometers long, with more or less equidistant intervals in areas with no straight roads / wilderness. What could they be? Airplanes with a wifi on? Powerlines? Underground cables or pipelines (my understanding is that some modern gas pipelines are connected to the internet for monitoring and maintenance purposes)?
- Why is Ukraine entirely blank? (I hope it's because you are protecting the civilians for humanitarian reasons! If so, good on you guys)
- Why is Europe, and Russian-European border regions so heavily mapped on the European side, but so little on the Russian side? It would be great if we had a way of observing recent changes and trends on APs along these border regions: could be an important early signal of a troop build-up.
Thanks for all the helpful clarifications in advance!
- Basic question: is all your data, and all the APs on your map only collected by wardriving? I tried reading through your FAQ, but couldn't find a definite answer to this. Do you have any other means of collecting these data points? It's difficult to believe there are so many wardriving enthusiasts around the world: to create this amount of data, you'd need to have hundreds of thousands of users, no?
- How do you keep the map updated? I checked some buildings I am familiar with, and the APs appeared several years old (I know the APs have different names these days). Is it just because no one has been wardriving in the neighbourhood in years? (By the way, what is the widest radius of advanced wardriving equipment? To capture an AP do you have to drive the street just adjacent to the building?)
- Once an AP has been logged, will it be there for eternity even if in real life the AP device was moved or destroyed? Because if so, this would create "ghost" data which would accumulate and populate the map within years, rendering the data obsolete.
- The search function only allows you to use by year, not by month. It would be great if it was possible to identify new APs created in, say, over the past month. Likewise, a sudden disappearance of APs could be a signal of something bigger at move.
- Sometimes on the map you see dotted lines that are straight as arrow, even up to dozens or hundreds of kilometers long, with more or less equidistant intervals in areas with no straight roads / wilderness. What could they be? Airplanes with a wifi on? Powerlines? Underground cables or pipelines (my understanding is that some modern gas pipelines are connected to the internet for monitoring and maintenance purposes)?
- Why is Ukraine entirely blank? (I hope it's because you are protecting the civilians for humanitarian reasons! If so, good on you guys)
- Why is Europe, and Russian-European border regions so heavily mapped on the European side, but so little on the Russian side? It would be great if we had a way of observing recent changes and trends on APs along these border regions: could be an important early signal of a troop build-up.
Thanks for all the helpful clarifications in advance!