Help android shows location in Richmond

[Daniel K]

Hi.

When at home and only connected to WiFi (no GSM or GPS), the phones locations shows Richmond, Arcadia Rd. I live in Romania. Any ideas why this location is showing?

Thanks
Daniel

 

[Hadron]

Probably there is an error in Google's database of WiFi networks: your phone can see a network that Google thinks is elsewhere. Could be that someone has moved from Richmond, could just be a database error. I don't know the innards of Google's location algorithm (I imagine they regard those as confidential) so couldn't say how it handles conflicting information (e.g. if your phone sees networks that it thinks are in different places), so this is just speculating from the fact that WiFi location relies on Google's database of WiFi routers and their locations. But errors in this, sometimes from WiFi, sometimes cell information, do occur: I see 5-10 different reports of this sort here each year.