coopster - 10:24 pm on Apr 15, 2011 (gmt 0)

Scenario:
Two different routers are being used in the United States, one in Wisconsin, one in South Dakota. Absolutely zero details regarding address or location are entered into the router settings. Next, both routers are disconnected and transported to a different country (different continent) where each is installed in different locations on different networks, miles apart. They are attached to a new network with two new and completely different Internet Service Providers.

I visit one of the networks and add the wireless connection to an Android phone which has never been connected via this router. Never. The weather app immediately brings up the weather in South Dakota for the city in which the router was originally located. What? So I check the GPS, just to see if it works in this country outside of the USA away from the normal cellular service provider (cellular service is disabled). WiFi is still enabled. Google Maps pulls the coordinates for the precise address location of the router before it was disconnected and moved from the United States in South Dakota!

I disconnect the Android from the WiFi and the next day attach the device to the other network that is using the other router and the same exact results, the GPS thinks I am at the exact street address location in Wisconsin where the router was first installed. Correction, the WiFi thinks it is at that location ... there is no way it could be running off GPS at this point, it has to be WiFi.

I am assuming that the original ISP is selling/pushing information to Google but how is this hardware being tracked? It can't be MAC address, is it?