Do WiFi Probe-Requests Reveal Your Trajectory?

In this paper, we propose the first framework that introduces the concept of the user’s bounded trajectory. We propose to leverage the signal strength of users’ public WiFi probe requests collected from measurements of multiple deployed WiFi sniffers. First, we investigate and characterize errors in RSSI-based radial-distance (between the user and each sniffer) estimation. Then, we approximate such radial distances leverage and deduce bounds associated with a user’s position. Finally, we infer a user’s bounded trajectory using the spatiotemporal bounds of users’ locations over time. We guarantee the bounds to enclose a user in space and time, with 95% confidence and a 10% margin of error. Using real-world and large-scale synthetic datasets under heterogeneous contexts and wireless conditions, we infer trajectories with bounds’ width of less than 10m in 70% of cases with users’ inclusiveness close to 100%.