Mobile carriers can get your GPS location • Hacker News Board

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#211

Post by dfc » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

AlexanderYamanu wrote: post #41

euhm, well. 112 programmer here. There are multiple levels. Cell tower triangulation come in automatically from providers. But they are only in tower numbers. They might be wrongly entered by engineers, hence the confirming question about where you are. Second is subscription information, as in registered address. Chances are if called from nearby your address, you are at your address. Next is a text to your phone nu…

Did you read the article or are you merely responding to the title? The article begins by acknowledging triangulation and then moving on to the point of the article. The article is about commands built into the UMTS and LTE specs for requesting GPS from the device. Your comment seems to be about everything but the main point of the article.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#212

Post by iamnothere » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

Gobd wrote: post #203

Nothing can stop the tower equipment manufacturer like Ericsson from knowing the location of your phone and cooperating with advertising or mobile tracking compainies to aggregate that data in useful ways. If you have a phone, people that want your location have it and there is nothing you can do.

False. You can:

1) Leave the phone at home

2) Use a phone with a hardware toggle switch that physically kills power to the cell modem, or turn off the phone and put it in a tested Faraday bag

3) Conspire with other citizens to make such location tracking illegal and to enforce that law

I’m tired of privacy doomerism. You have options, use them.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#213

Post by tastyfreeze » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #68

thisislife2 wrote: post #44

From the comments, it appears many are not aware that even the US government buys location data of users from data brokers - How the Federal Government Buys Our Cell Phone Location Data - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/how-federal-government... ... Apparently, US cell phone companies are one of the providers of this data - US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data - https://news…

We really have a societal problem in that we allow private entities to do things we don’t allow government to do. Furthermore, the issue is exacerbated by then allowing governments to bypass these issues by then just paying private entities to do the things it can’t do as a proxy for the same functional outcomes. But we want to support privatization at all cost, even when privatization these days has significant infl…

This is why I advocate for making selling location/identifying data illegal. If nobody is allowed to sell it then the government cannot legally buy it.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#214

Post by xyst » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

Even if you have an Apple in-house modem, seems it can only be disabled with select carriers:

> Germany: Telekom > United Kingdom: EE, BT > United States: Boost Mobile > Thailand: AIS, True

So turning this "off" on other carriers results in GPS data still shipped off?

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#215

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

KellyCriterion wrote: post #150

Etheryte wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this should be happening without the user's knowledge and consent. Swap out your phone carrier for Facebook and it should be plainly obvious why the current state of affairs is undesirable.

I think this feature is required for emergency calls if your specific carrier is not available/in reach - in emergency mode after the phone is restarted, it does connect to any carrier when calling 911, not only yours?

[deleted]

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#216

Post by dfc » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

spwa4 wrote: post #117

nichos wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would ask for your source

How that works is simple: there are regulations that force that the microphone used for calling is directly connected to the "baseband", which is under control of the carrier. It has to be, because of AT&T's argument: ONE misbehaving baseband can make cell phones inoperable in an area that's up to a kilometer in diameter. So AT&T's cell towers "need" to be able to send out a signal that permanently disables a phone's…

> It must have a tamper-resistant identifier (IMEI number ... kind of).

What is the tamper resistant number that is kind of the IMEI?

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#217

Post by aydyn » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #212

Gobd wrote: post #203

Nothing can stop the tower equipment manufacturer like Ericsson from knowing the location of your phone and cooperating with advertising or mobile tracking compainies to aggregate that data in useful ways. If you have a phone, people that want your location have it and there is nothing you can do.

False. You can: 1) Leave the phone at home 2) Use a phone with a hardware toggle switch that physically kills power to the cell modem, or turn off the phone and put it in a tested Faraday bag 3) Conspire with other citizens to make such location tracking illegal and to enforce that law I’m tired of privacy doomerism. You have options, use them.

> If you have a phone, people that want your location have it and there is nothing you can do.

> False. You can: 1) Leave the phone at home

Then you dont have a phone, do you? Come on you are being pedantic for no reason.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#218

Post by antiframe » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:02 PM UTC

iamnothere wrote: post #212

Gobd wrote: post #203

Nothing can stop the tower equipment manufacturer like Ericsson from knowing the location of your phone and cooperating with advertising or mobile tracking compainies to aggregate that data in useful ways. If you have a phone, people that want your location have it and there is nothing you can do.

False. You can: 1) Leave the phone at home 2) Use a phone with a hardware toggle switch that physically kills power to the cell modem, or turn off the phone and put it in a tested Faraday bag 3) Conspire with other citizens to make such location tracking illegal and to enforce that law I’m tired of privacy doomerism. You have options, use them.

Also, run an OS that doesn't allow every running process to read your GPS location. And allows you to turn off your cell modem.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#219

Post by dfc » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #112

They don't need to get your GPS location. With 4G and 5G the timing and clock precision at the basestations is enough to multi-laterate you down to about 50m (prior 3G/2G stuff was more like 100-200 meters). They are required by US law to store this multi-laterated position data track (updated every time your phone announces itself to basestations) for 2 years. But most telcos store it for more like 5+ years because…

What law requires carriers to keep Cell Site Location Information for 2 years?

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#220

Post by apparent » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #207

apparent wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those websites don't have my phone number.

The ads/analytics providers very well might. They gather data and cross-reference from tons of different sources. And I don't know about you, but I've put my phone number into a lot of apps and sites. Sometimes it's required, sometimes it's for 2FA, etc.

I use a virtual number for almost all such signups (only doctors or other safety-related providers), so I'm not sure that would be a possible avenue for these calls, which come to my direct cell phone number. It is not quite a secret, but it is not something I give out to many companies.