Track People Using Their Mobile Phones

Richard W.M. Jones writes "A couple of new services have been rolled out in the UK recently which allow you to track people when they have their mobile phones turned on. Mapminder states 'It's important to know where your loved ones are for your own peace of mind'. 192.com asks 'Do you want to know where your children are?'. Of course the police have been able to do this for a long time, and evidence from mobile phone positions has been used in high-profile court cases in the UK. Silicon.com has an article."

Comments

Cell Phone tracking covered before on /.

[TheRedHorse]

Here and passive radar tracking via cell phone towers here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah

[heironymouscoward]

"Location based services" is the technical term. Basically the GSM provider can localize a phone depending on its last known cell contact. Phones in passive mode re-register themselves automatically only every half-hour or so, so the position is not up to date unless the person is using the phone to call or send messages. There is a kind of 'ping' SMS which just causes the phone to re-register and thus return a valid position. It only works if the phone is turned on (doh!). The whole concept is seen as a great money spinner by the GSM providers, but like MMS and other new gadgets, that is more optimistic than realistic. LBS is probably going to be most useful in chat and dating, allowing over-horny people (I suspect mainly gays) to find each other simply by tapping on their phone. The "find your loved ones" is a joke, no-one actually expects to use this to find their errant husband or kids - it's for dating, boozing, and possibly the return of stolen phones (the service I would most appreciate, having had 5+ phones stolen in the last two years).

My company develops LBS SMS products. It's a fun market.

Carriers have been using Triangulation for a while

[PureFiction]

This is all pretty well known to those watching the E911 drama unfold.

The easiest and simplest method for most carriers to comply with E911 is using triangulation. Indeed, bellsouth even posted a nice article about the various ways location can be obtained for cell phone users.

Obviously, with a GPS stuck in the phone itself this becomes really trivial, but even with normal phones you can use a variety of techniques, like Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) and Angle Of Arrival (AOA) and even Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD) to triangulate the location of a wireless caller.

The carriers are already using this technology across the US, and many phones are now available with GPS integrated.

Welcome to the future.

Phone off but you can still be tracked

[bored_SuSE_user]

I found out this when I was working over the summer. Your mobile can still be tracked even though it's switched off. The only way to ensure it is not tracked is to physically take the battery out of it. This can be proved by listening to the interference caused by the phone when it's off and near a radio/stereo for example.

Re:the moral is

[An Economist]

You are mixing 2 cases here:

1. was the sad case of Daminola Taylor, a 10 year old schoolboy, murdered. It was expcted a gang of only slightly older kids killed him, but this suspected group 'got off' because their mobile phones were traced to a distance too far away from the murder scene to be credible. The ganag was mainly Afro-Carribean (Daminola Taylor was Nigerian, the racial aspect centered around Afro-Carribean vs. African violence, a serious friction point in London's black community).

2. The infamous racist killing in SOuth London was that of Stephen Lawrence (late teens IIRC) whose alleged attackers (racist white gang) 'got off' on technical details.

Both were killings and in both cases the attacters were not convicted.

Blue tooth in Denmark to track your kid.

[Saggi]

Track your children.

Some of these services come in Denmark as well. Today we already use some tracking systems to track children, preventing them from becoming lost. The below article describe a blue tooth system installed in Aalborg Zoo here in Denmark.

http://in.tech.yahoo.com/030620/137/25bu3.html

The system is in principle (but not technically) the same as triangulation of a cell phone to track your child between school and home. The main issue arises if tracking is allowed without the cell phone owners consent.

By the way; if I was a kid who didn't want mom and dad to know where I was, I would borrow my phone to someone else, or just turn it of. Kids are not stupid...