Apple has recently had an iPhone patent approved that could rank public Wi-Fi networks on different criteria, such as strength, security, and popularity.
A patent called ‘CROWD Sourced Privacy Preserving Access Point Mapping’ was filed to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office back in March 2023 and granted on July 16. On page 28, the patent explains how Apple devices of the future could label Wi-Fi networks by safely collecting data without storing a user’s information. “The access point data reports can be delivered without identifying the user devices, or users thereof, and their exact locations. Based on the access point data reports, the server device can map locations of access points and relationships between access points to generate network topologies, network locations, network quality scores, and various other characteristics of networks and/or access points.” The patent then explains how an Apple device could use this information. “The generated access point data can be served to user devices so that these can improve the efficiency of the interactions between user devices and the detected access points and/or networks.”
