Difference between what's in OpenCelliD and Mozilla Location Service

General
#1

I came across the Mozilla Location Service here: https://location.services.mozilla.com/

It says it’s built with OpenCelliD, but I’m confused about how the datasets are different.

Related to this question, I’m unclear on how one would use the Mozilla service to identify a device’s location (as the docs indicate it can be used).

#2

Please check this post from Hanno Schlichting

The geolocation process is fairly simple:

  • Devices scan identifiers broadcasted by cells
  • These cells can be queried to OpenCelliD/ MLS API
  • Position of the device can be found by triangulation
#3

This is certainly helpful – thanks! – but I’m asking even more basic questions:

  1. Are the OpenCelliD and MLS datasets the same?

  2. How would I know which cells a third party device is in contact with? (Or to make it even simpler, what is a specific question one might use this dataset to solve? I’m lost on what useful questions for this dataset are.)

#4
  1. No, the datasets are different but there can be a lot of overlapping data
  2. We do not have any type of continuing access to the cell or to devices connected to it. The data merely shows approximate positions of cells. These positions are calculated from tons of ‘measurements’ submitted from individual devices. These submissions are anonymous which means we won’t be able to recognize individual devices sending us this data.
#5

Super helpful.

  1. Is there a clear explanation of somewhere of what’s different about each dataset?

  2. By cells I assume you mean wifi points and telcom towers. If I am correct about that, I’m guessing the main use-case for these datasets is tracking the presence / growth of these types of infrastructure in given areas. Is that correct? If so, is there a column that gives the “cell type” so I can know whether a lat/long refers to a wifi point or telcom tower?

#6
  1. The actual data on cells could be different because the contributors might be different and are sending different measurements. I don’t think there is any documentation anywhere about the differences.
  2. OpenCelliD is cells only - not WiFi points. Actually, that’s a big difference b/w OpenCelliD and MLS.
#7

What are cells exactly?

Telcom towers?

#8

A physical cell tower can have multiple cells on it.

#9

Understood. Thank you.

I don’t see where in the Mozilla data I can differentiate between cells and wifi points: https://mozilla.github.io/ichnaea/import_export.html

Is there something obvious that I’m missing?

#10

MLS doesn’t share WiFi data as a downloadable file. You can access WiFi data via their API

#11

So all of those lat/longs are cell locations that correspond to locations of cell towers?

#12

Approx location of cells, yes.

#13

Each Telecom tower generates three cells around itself. Each cell is shaped as an angle of 120°, so that three cells are enough to make a 360° coverage around the tower. If you walked in circle around a single tower, your mobile phone would connect itself to each one of these three cells, one after one another.

#14

Hi, I’m Ivan and I am new here. First of all, this tool is awesome!
When I search a cell tower with MCC, MNC, LAC and CID, then mapa shows an area with red flags with “G”, corresponding to a GSM antenna, and several flags with “U”. What does “U” flags means? And how accurate is the “Range”?
Thanks!

#15

G = GSM (2G network)
U = UMTS (3G network)
L = LTE (4G network)

See: List of mobile phone generations - Wikipedia

#16

Hey my name is Brian and I am new here. I’m currently using the app cell spy catcher to detect imsi catchers and I have noticed that some of the cell towers are imsi catchers and not cell towers
. for instance one of the cell towers is located in the parking lot of my apartment building and then a couple of others are on the street near here, so you need to go walk around and see if the cell towers are actually there or not

#17

What is CDMA then? Both 2G & 3G?

#18

Hello I need some help understanding and identifying and IP address of something in my home programmed like a cell tower. This is going to be ridiculous.

Last year I was the victim of a group in Korea, that has access to ATT and Verizon’s cell towers. they came up with some programming to basically surge and stream of Electrectomagnetic energy, combining a signal booster tower and any of the others. And I’m talking 10x-15x what a tower would do. Basically they hack the 4g or 5gs typically then overload your devices and hack you to shit. Here’s what they did, they kept a field around my router and my phone then basically programmed a new cell tower right there. This meant I couldn’t unhack anything. It’s horrible. Here’s the deal these guys targeted me then, and just found me again at my Dads. I can send you my readings but dude around a couple of our devices you get up to 300 V/m2 I’ve used several devices, I’m actually getting sick now when they do it. So I know they are assigning an address to this cell tower and a hacker I talked to last year told me they would leave me alone but there were 3 new addresses in my home. When they do that it’s obvious, my dad has dementia has no idea it’s happening but they hit his phone he go sick and started throwing up within a couple days. When they start this they don’t seem to stop. How could I locate this IP