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Cell Tracking on the Rise
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet is reporting that with the recent advances in cell phone tracking tech more and more companies are using it to keep track of their employee's movements. From the article: 'The gains, say the converted, are many, ranging from knowing whether workers have been "held up" in the pub rather than in a traffic jam, to being able to quickly locate staff and reroute them if necessary. Not everybody is happy about being monitored, however, and civil rights group Liberty says the growth of tracking raises data privacy concerns.'"
I read the article, but when reading between the lines I noticed that someone could track your cell phone without any sort technological upgrade on your phone. This means that the tracking technology is on the telco's side, and if they are now offering it as a reliable service to the public, it means that it has been around for a while... sounds like old technology to me. I guess all this means is that now businesses can do what the government has been doing for years. Face it guys, our privacy has been invade-able for a while, and there is little that we (the concerned public) can do about it.
oblig.: "In Russia, you can always find a Cell Phone. In Soviet Britain, Cell Phone finds YOU!"
Turning off the cell phone is not enough not to be traced.
When you turn the cell phone off (or it is shutting down because of low battery), it nicely says the network is being shut down. So your evil tracer would know what you did.
It is a much better solution to unplug the battery. The cell phone will suddenly disappear from the network as if you were passing through an uncovered area.
And none could say where you are and why they don't know.
The only cons are about the loss of some cell phone data (like the last calls details and so on). But we can afford such a loss for the sake of privacy, can't we?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The mobile provider knows which cell your phone had contacted last. If the last contact is a little old, your cell phone can be paged to find it. This paging is always done when there's a call for you, but it can be done at any time. Usally the cell phone networks page the mobile phones a few times a day on their own. This alone gives a rough estimate where your cell phone is located.
If more precision is necessary, there are applications that request from your mobile the signal strenght of the available cells and triangulate from this data a better location. Depending on how the network is laid out, this can give very good results.
So if you want to have a peaceful time in the pub, best just take the battery out of your phone. This way it drops out of the network without signing off and you can always blame no reception. As an alternative, select nice pubs in cellars with no coverage.
This applies to GSM and UMTS networks. I have no idea if it also works that way with those weird american networks.
Tracking a cell phone doesn't rely on sim card.
Each cell phone has unique vendor identification code called IMEI, which is used to identify the phone on cell networks.
Think MAC address, but it's harder to fake, and it's visible to entire network instead one lan segment.
Turning off your phone does block the trace as long as you move from the point where you turned the phone off.
Device-id query for powered off phone returns the last connected cell tower as phone location when the device itself cannot be reached from service area.
Atleast when we're talking about GSM networks
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Unions are NOT the answer. Individual people standing up for themselves IS the answer, particularly if as many people as possible do so. I have worked as a unionized employee just once, and it was not a pleasant experience. The union limited what I could do on the job, took my hard-earned money (because the company agreed to only hire union workers, who had to pay dues), yet never did anything for me.
Unions are NOT the answer. Indvidual people working together to assert their rights and make necessary changes is fine, but unions as they exist today are NOT ok in my book.
All cell calls to 911 are located in this manner.
And yet this is the world many of you fantasize about living in. Every week they fight for and babble on and on about the inalienable rights of aliens. How could anyone not believe they would use the ship's monitoring cameras to see each other's poker hands and use the Holodeck for Orion slave-girl porn reenactments?
In that same FICTIONAL UNIVERSE, employers and government don't abuse the massive database. The communicators for tracking are onlt worn by military personel, and only (necessarily) on duty. Apparently, the location function only works when abord the Enterprise. Apparently, having a genetic trait that will/could lead to a disease requiring expensive treatment doesn't get you banned from free medical care.
Unfortunatly, those conditions are not present today. The ability of a society to pinpoint any citizen's location and to know their exact medical condition carry great responsabilities. Our 'leaders' today are far too irresponsable to be trusted with any it.