Still confused about ipad air wifi-only location services

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Level 1

9 points

Still confused about ipad air wifi-only location services

I have an iPad Air, a couple years old. We spent 3 weeks in Italy last year using a great app called CityMaps2Go. When we were connected to wifi we would download maps of the areas we intended to visit. When we got to those places, I would open the iPad and would see a good-sized blue dot showing where we were, moving with us, whether we were walking, riding in a taxi, on a train, whatever. We were never asked to connect to wifi while out and about, much less not asked over and over, as we must have moved across any number of wifi networks. How can this be done if the wifi-only iPad has no GPS capability?

Posted on Feb 11, 2016 7:44 AM

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Answer 1

Rudegar

Level 10

170,580 points

Feb 11, 2016 8:13 AM in response to Swegnson

if a ios device is set to ask to join wifi networks in the network settings it will join unencrypted wifi networks without asking you for anything, but you can detect it by looking at the title bar where the wifi icon would display

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Answer 2

Swegnson Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 12, 2016 9:02 AM in response to Rudegar

Well, you are right. I wrote to the app developers and they said

quote

Apple uses a feature called WiFi networking, which finds nearby Wi-Fi networks and sends information about them to Apple to help Apple build a database of open Wi-Fi networks and to figure out your location based upon this information if you don't have cell service.

It is a form of crowd sourcing. You can find more information here: https://support.apple.com/de-at/HT201357

end quote

so, thanks!

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