Help Desk
MOVED A WI-FI ROUTER? THAT COULD MESS WITH AN iPHONE’S LOCATION
You pull up the location of your iPhone, Mac or other devices in Find My, and they’re located somewhere other than you expect them to be. Or you’ve shared your location with a friend or family member, and they see you far off from your current position. What’s happening? It might have to do with a relocated Wi-Fi router.
Bear with me, as this sounds like I’m tacking red string to a corkboard and connecting the dots. Instead, it has to do with how Apple approximates positions and leans on Wi-Fi – no conspiracy required. Wi-Fi is one leg of Apple’s location-finding system used across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and used by Apple’s Find My, Maps, and many other apps, and made available to third-party apps.
Because Apple factors the position of Wi-Fi routers in its database into the location coordinates it reports for devices, a relocated base station can skew where you or others who connect to it are pinpointed on a map.
Wi-Fi as a positioning clue
A Wi-Fi router broadcasts a unique numeric identifier by default, along with its network name and a few other incidental details. This is true even when there is a strong network password set and full security is enabled. Because Wi-Fi routers don’t move much–they’re more likely to fail and be replaced–their unique identifiers can be used to estimate their location when devices with GPS built-in measure Wi-Fi strength from many locations near each router. Combining these measurements allows a form
