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Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

an.dywa.ng

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Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#231

Post by tavavex »

iamnothere wrote: post #223
aydyn wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not all the time, no. But I can make calls over wifi and forward texts to myself. And nobody’s tracking me. Why would I always need the phone with me?

So people can give you a call even if you're not home? I mean, this has been the main selling point of mobile phones for over 30 years, and especially before smartphones became a thing. If you don't take your phone with you, you might as well wire in a landline and just use that.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#232

Post by bronco21016 »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #40

This community should be talking about meshcore more imho. It's a peer to peer network based on Lora. It really only allows text messaging but with up to 20km hops between peers coverage is surprisingly huge. Incredibly useful if you go hiking with friends (if you get split up you can still stay in touch). See https://eastmesh.au/ and scroll down to the map for the Victoria and now more widely Australia network that'…

I really want to get into these Lora based mesh tools but the range in my experience is terrible. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, maybe it's a lack of nodes in my area.

I just tested the other day. I'm in the midwest US so it's winter, no leaves. I managed to get about a quarter mile before my two portable nodes couldn't talk to each other. T-Echo with muziworks whip antenna.

Without a bunch of solidly placed, high elevation, high gain antenna nodes, this just isn't really that usable.

Plus, all the other issues others have highlighted.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#235

Post by parsimo2010 »

bzmrgonz wrote: post #233

I wonder if graphene on pixel is immune to these remote requests??

I wouldn’t bet on it. If the baseband modem has access to location data then it could send it without the OS being able to intervene. I don’t know about Pixels, but many devices are highly integrated now that I would want some real thorough and specific research before I trusted that an OS could block the modem from sending location data.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#236

Post by benSaiyen »

ssl-3 wrote: post #227
benSaiyen wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triangulation does not provide granularity needed for emergency response. You want EMS looking for a needle in a haystack while you are suffering a heart attack?

Indeed. How might people suggest that this would work, do you suppose? "We've narrowed the victim's location down to one city block, boys! Assemble a posse and start knocking on doors: If they don't answer, kick it in!" ? (And before anyone says "Well, it can work however it used to work!" please remember: Previously, we had landline phones in our homes. When we called 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 for emergency service…

We also had phone books with everyone's name and address listed.

Everyone was effectively doxxed yet it was never a security issue.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#237

Post by ssl-3 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #70
metaphor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think cell tower triangulation is the only data point being exploited to minimize position error?

I've wondered if they can also find you by what wifi or Bluetooth devices are around. Odds are one or more humans nearby has their GPS on. Your device can snitch on what's around or those other devices snitch on you.

Of course they can. Locations can be trilaterated using wifi and bluetooth.

Back when my OG iPod Touch was minty and new (2008, IIRC), it was in many ways a stripped-down iPhone.

One of the features that was stripped out was GPS: It didn't have that at all. It also lacked Bluetooth.

But it did have a Maps app, and it also had location services. This used visible wifi access points and a database back home on the mothership to determine location.

It was pretty neat at that time to take this responsive, color-screened pocket computer with me on a walk, connect it to a then-ubiquitous open SSID, and have it figure out my location and provide a map (with aerial photos!) of where I was. It wasn't ever dead-nuts, but it was consistently spooky-good.

It's pretty old tech at this point, and devices still use it today.

(Related tech: Those plastic table tents that you take with you at McDonald's after ordering at the kiosk? They're BLE beacons. Sensors in the ceiling track them so that the person bringing the tray with food on it knows about where you're sitting before they even walk out of the kitchen. And modern pocket supercomputers use the locations of these and other beacons, as well, to help trilaterate their position. Urban environments are replete with very chatty things that don't move around very much.)

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#238

Post by thaumasiotes »

tavavex wrote: post #231
iamnothere wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all the time, no. But I can make calls over wifi and forward texts to myself. And nobody’s tracking me. Why would I always need the phone with me?

So people can give you a call even if you're not home? I mean, this has been the main selling point of mobile phones for over 30 years, and especially before smartphones became a thing. If you don't take your phone with you, you might as well wire in a landline and just use that.

> So people can give you a call even if you're not home? I mean, this has been the main selling point of mobile phones for over 30 years, and especially before smartphones became a thing.

It was the selling point of mobile phones before smartphones became a thing. It obviously hasn't been the main selling point of mobile phones since then.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#239

Post by crazygringo »

apparent wrote: post #220
crazygringo wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do pattern matching against lots of pieces of information. It could be as simple as a local utility company selling their customer list with phone number and address attached, then a retail website has your address from when you bought something, now your phone number gets linked.

It doesn't matter if you don't give your phone number to many companies, it only takes one.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#240

Post by throw1771 »

iamnothere wrote: post #206
strcat wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Connecting a cellular radio via USB provides far less isolation than the approach of a tiny kernel driver connected to an IOMMU isolated cellular radio on mainstream devices. USB has immense complexity and attack surface, especially with a standard Linux kernel configuration. Forensic data extraction companies mostly haven't bothered using attack vectors other than USB due to it being such a weak point. Many of the t…

The Linux USB stack improves over time, and besides, implementing it with USB makes it easier to implement hardware toggle switches. (Cutting power pins to the USB modem is like unplugging it.) Edit: I’ll add that I think smartphone “security” is almost impossible to achieve, given the complexity of everything and the opacity of modem vendor stacks, which is why I just assume endpoint compromise. I use my phone rarel…

Just FYI the person you're replying to is intimately familiar with GrapheneOS

(Founder/lead dev/ex lead dev, can't recall exactly)

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