why-fi

I created this open source project to show how easy it is to track people’s movements without their consent using their own smartphones.

This is possible because the constant search for Wi-Fi turn our phones into beacons signaling where we are, who we are and even where we have been. With that, anyone can create a map of people’s movements by collecting data in large scale.

Despite looking like a complex endeavour, it’s fairly simple to do. To bring awareness to this issue, I have created an open source version of such tracking system to show that any big or small organization (a shopping center, for instance) can track us.

I have presented this work at the Mozilla Festival, in London, in 2019.

The entire project can be found at https://github.com/laurybueno/why-fi