So I was watching Veronica Mars. It is an entertaining detective drama about a high school student whos father is a Private Investigator. I like the show. In this episode, Veronica’s father has to get in touch with her. So, he tracks her cell phone. And, her location appears on a computer monitor, which he just happens to have mounted in his car. Veronica is located and everything turns out ok.
Cecil has already said words to the effect that television and reality are only loosley tied together.
But, I am still curious as to whether this type of tracking feature can be used by someone who is looking for me. So, is it this easy to track someone by thier cell phone?
Newer cell phones have GPS locators built right into them, mainly so 911 services can locate you if you call for help. If 911 can find, it seems plausible to me that someone else with the proper equipment could find you, too.
Just yesterday, I used the auto-locate feature of go2travel to get driving directions to an address. A prompt came up from AT&T Wireless to confirm that I wanted to share my current location with go2travel, then go2travel presented me with a list of businesses in the area I was in, to select one as a starting point. So the phone new at least what block I was in.
Also, since your phone will be detected by one or more cell towers in the area whether in use or not (to determine where to route incoming phone calls) your cell phone company has enough information to triangulate a rough position. (Rough meaning on the order of many blocks).
Someone can probably give you more information on this, but it’s doubtful the police would be able to do this without a special call to a cell phone company, preferably with advance notice. The last time I did IT involving the police, their hardware was somewhat minimal, and their internet connection “secured” to a ridiculous degree. I don’t buy the tracking-from-squad-car bit at all.
Well, new cellphones do have GPS in them, but I don’t know how accessible the tracking information is, especially to someone (like a PI) that’s just on the edge of “law enforcement”. I would have thought that getting that kind of infomation would require a court order - except in cases of emergency, which is what GPS was put on the phone for in the first place; handy features like getting driving directions to the nearest pizza place were only secondary considerations in getting GPS to phones.
Now, any cellphone can be traced by figuring out which towers are receiving a signal from the phone. Of course, this can only tell you roughly where a user is, unless some special geography is in play - like the case would be if a cell tower only supports one isolated main road. Of course, if the phone is transmitting to more than one tower, the signal can be triangulated according to the signal strength at each tower, but again this only give one a general location, not anything specific like you see in TV shows. Also, this type of traching absolutely requires not only the permission but the actual coordination of the cell phone company in question, as you’d have to access their internal network to get this info.
It’s always possible that Veronica’s phone has some add-on GPS unit (which would be trackable with anything - Veronica’s dad is just the type of worry wart that would have something like that, too - but the phone looks too slim for that.
My wife has a i710 nextel phone with built-in gps. Since the bill is in my name, I can go online activate the GPS feature (costs additional $) and track it via a map online.
It an additional $20 per month, and its easier just to call her and ask her where she is, so we don’t use it.
I think its likely that her phone is paid for by her Dad anyways since she works for him too.
Hmm. She has a cell phone and he needs to get in touch with her.
I’m stumped. I have no idea how to get in touch with someone with a cell phone. If only there was a way I could talk to them. Maybe sometime in the future we’ll be able to do that, but for now we’re stuck with tracking from a computer mounted in a car.
My cousin tells a funny story from her days working customer service for a cell phone provider. One of the CS reps called in “sick”. He called in “sick” on his cell phone. His boss, using the problem determination software that the CS reps use every day as part of their jobs, traced the call as coming from a cell tower somewhere in the general vicinity of Whistler. Funny how the first big snowfall of the season in Whistler makes all those people in Vancouver catch cold.
Hah, I helped a fellow Activation rep track her hubby via his cell. As I used to be CS and still had my access. I mapped his cell (it was on but not in use, I was scanning the cell tower transfers and signal strength). Of course I told her she couldn’t use it for anything but a gag.
Another time I, being the helpful CS rep, helped a lady who couldn’t reach her hubby’s cell (she was paying for it). I scanned his cell and found he was in the US. I told her that I couldn’t guarantee signal on the US network and she freaked out about how he should be in Toronto. Whoops!
Just a couple of days ago mobile ( cellphone ) tracking was used here during a murder investigation. Halfway down this article it explains how it was used .