Meetro worked by actively scanning for the MAC addresses of wireless access points around a user's location. Then Meetro contacted the main database server and compared the MAC address to a list of known access points. Subsequently it did some mathematical calculations to determine the latitude and longitude of a location. Once Meetro had calculated the general area (usually a quarter mile) of a user's physical location, it then compared it to others users and displayed who's online within a quarter mile, half mile, mile, etc... A user's exact location was never displayed to other people on the network for privacy and security reasons. Meetro would only present that a user is within a range of 1/4 of a mile. Users could choose to make information of their location public, such as "I'm at the cafe on 2nd and Broadway."