Location tracking via cell phone number

[SHRED]

My wife is convinced that her location is being tracked by one of our relatives via her cell phone number. She has an old skool flip phone with GPS turned off.

I called our provider CREDO whereupon a technical advisor assured me that only law enforcement has this capability. No websites can do this. That you cannot type in a phone number and track someone The only way is if you had smart phone with tracking software loaded on it.

She is ready to go get a prepaid phone to use.

How can I convince her this isn't true?

[darkangel218]

1. Its hard to convince her, if shes stubborn about it.

Let her get a prepaid, its easier.

[SHRED]

5. you may be correct

Only problem is her unfounded resentment towards our relative.

[darkangel218]

7. When i was lil, my mom was convinced my aunt was doing witchcraft against us.

She forbidded me from ever going to my aunts.

[darkangel218]

2. Oh even better. Buy some cheap tin foil and wrap it around her cell.

Not even aliens can penetrate mighty tin foil

[Jersey Devil]

6. or protect her mind and body with an AFDB

http://www.zapatopi.net/afdb/

[jberryhill]

3. Well it all depends

Does said relative have a friend who is a tech at the telephone company? Does said relative, or a friend thereof, have mad hacking skills and found a way in?

If you are asking whether it is possible on a traditional cellphone by someone who isn't using some sort of illicit access to the phone network data itself, then, no.

Now, there are a bunch of "joke" apps that people get a kick out of. For example, I have an app I can show you where I punch in your cell phone number, and the display zooms in to a map showing your location. This app works because I am standing there showing it to you. All it does is take an input of any cell phone number, and it displays my own location. But because the interface goes through this whole "finding location" set of displays and bunch of jazzy graphics, the fact that I am standing there, right next to you, while it goes through these gyrations is something you don't really think of. I've shown this to a number of my geek friends whose reaction is normally, "Wow, you shouldn't be able to do that."

I'd be curious to know WHY she thinks they can find her. It's relatively inexpensive to buy small GPS units which you can stick in discreet places on, say, someone's car, and obtain position reporting information. And by "inexpensive", I mean around $100 and less, depending on features and whether an additional cellular service plan is required (add in another $10 a month for as long as you want to use it).

Of course the other way to know someone's location by using their cell phone is to call them up, and listen to the background noise for clues. You can know whether someone is at a bar, a ball game, a train station, yadda yadda yadda, without any great skills. Or, just know the habits of the person you are calling. I mean, really, most people are at home or they are at one of a very small number of other places most of the time. Joe Blow is either home, at work, out walking the dog, at his friend's place, or out at his usual haunt. How many places are you really at in the course of a week?

[meow2u3]

4. Location tracking is a mixed bag IMO

On the one hand, location tracking can help the police locate you via your phone in case you call E911, but on the other hand, stalkers can track you without your knowledge.

[MadHound]

8. Well, even with an old school flip phone,

GPS tracking is always on, unless the phone is at least twelve years old.

That said, unless said relative is in law enforcement, works at a cell phone company, or is a good hacker, there shouldn't be anyway for her to be tracked.

If you want to give her a piece of advice, tell her to take out the battery unless she is using the phone. Then nobody can track her.

[newblewtoo]

9. Here is a very intresting article I just

received the other day from a friend 'in the business'.

Software that tracks people on social media created by defence firm

Exclusive: Raytheon's Riot program mines social network data like a 'Google for spies', drawing ire from civil rights groups

more:

The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a "Google for spies" and tapped as a means of monitoring and control.

Using Riot it is possible to gain an entire snapshot of a person's life – their friends, the places they visit charted on a map – in little more than a few clicks of a button.

In the video obtained by the Guardian, it is explained by Raytheon's "principal investigator" Brian Urch that photographs users post on social networks sometimes contain latitude and longitude details – automatically embedded by smartphones within "exif header data."




http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/10/software-tracks-social-media-defence

This is some very scary stuff.