Location, Location, Location: Want To Help Mozilla Break The Ecosystem Locks?

The MozStumbler app is one way Android users can assist Mozilla with its quest to open up the walled gardens of Apple and Google.

Mozilla has an immensely challenging goal: making it easier for people to avoid getting stuck in the technology domains of tech giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon. If you're sympathetic, the Firefox developer has an app for that. Or at least for one small but important part of it, figuring out where your phone is, based on what Wi-Fi networks and mobile phone base stations are nearby.

The MozStumbler project is an Android app that sniffs the ether for radio signals, couples it with your location as measured by GPS, and sends the data to Mozilla. It's a critical component of Mozilla Location Service, a publicly available interface that tells a computer or mobile device its location based on that wireless network data.