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I'm not sure that this is an appropriate question.

But when I'm using apps like foursquare, it actually ask me to turn on my wifi to better find my location...

Here is the question: Why we need wifi to improve the locate process? Any paper or blogs saying the theory behind this?

Or is just some function provide by Andriod and IOS API?

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    IP addresses are much better than GPS for location finding in most cases
    – built1n
    May 10, 2014 at 21:56
  • No programming related for this question. Not belong to stackoverflow.
    – Onur
    May 10, 2014 at 21:59

2 Answers 2

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Apple uses a crowdsourced database of information wireless network locations to give you a location based on your wifi network.

Crowd-sourced Wi-Fi and cellular Location Services

If Location Services is on, your device will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple to augment Apple's crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations. In addition, if you're traveling (for example, in a car) and Location Services is on, a GPS-enabled iOS device will also periodically send GPS locations and travel speed information in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple to be used for building up Apple's crowd-sourced road traffic database. The crowd-sourced location data gathered by Apple doesn't personally identify you.

I believe Google has a similar database and they use the street view cars to gather data on wifi networks.

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I'm no expert but did a project last year that was heavily based on location. Companies like google for example have large databases with stored geo-location data for wifi locations these data bases are constantly being updated. One of their main advantages is locating people indoors.

Anyway I found this an interesting read which might help answer your question

http://blog.shinetech.com/2011/10/14/a-good-look-at-android-location-data/

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