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Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

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Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#391

Post by lazide »

lrvick wrote: post #389
lazide wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing you have a bunch of other people with their own cell phones doing things? That’s the reason most other people are (fundamentally) going to struggle.

Traveling internationally or domestically, booking flights, hotels, going to concerts, theme parks, the movies, organizing hangouts with friends, exploring new locations... all of these things I do just fine by using a web browser on a desktop computer before I leave home, and sometimes printing a couple things. I live a typical middle class lifestyle just without the doom scrolling. All the ways of living an active…

So what - printed maps? No ‘where are you?’ texts or the like? No looking up nearby anything you’re curious about but didn’t know about before hand?

Certainly possible, I guess, if everyone in your circle does the same, and has a ton of patience, and you spend a ton of extra time doing all the prep in advance. And don’t need to deal with things like traffic jams right now, or the like.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#392

Post by [deleted] »

lrvick wrote: post #382
hpdigidrifter wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my skepticism but I find it hard to believe you can actually participate in western society without choosing to have a government mandated tracking device? Maybe you live somewhere this is possible but it's definitely not in the developed world

I am a security engineer and I live and work in Silicon Valley with an active social life. None of these things require a phone.

[deleted]

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#393

Post by ISL »

lrvick wrote: post #386
CalRobert wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hit issues around things like 2fa, online banking?

All 2FA options that require a phone like TOTP can be done just as easily on a laptop with a yubikey or nitrokey. I have several business and personal bank accounts with two major banks. No Android or iOS needed. Sure they push you hard to use them, but just say it is against your unspecified religion. They cannot make you use Android or iOS.

And your medical provider who will only allow you to see your online medical records after an SMS 2FA challenge?

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#395

Post by sam345 »

SilverElfin wrote: post #262
jmward01 wrote: post #90

"and notify the user when such attempts are made to their device." We aren't going to remove the security state. We should make all attempts to, but it won't happen. What needs to happen is accountability. I should be able to turn off sharing personal information and if someone tries I should be notified and have recourse. This should also be retroactive. If I have turned off sharing and someone finds a technical loo…

For consequences, we need to do away with the notion of qualified immunity. Why should police officers, politicians, agents of the government have any immunity for their actions? They should carry personal liability for breaking the law and violating others’ rights. Otherwise, there is no reason they’ll change. Right now, at best you’ll sue the government and get some money, but all you’re doing is punishing other ta…

This reflects an anarchist viewpoint or a trial lawyer's dream. Good luck having a government where everyone participating can be sued individually.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#396

Post by lazide »

taurath wrote: post #381
CalRobert wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hit issues around things like 2fa, online banking?

Most 2FA can be done without a phone, and you can also use offline 2FA keys, not necessarily a text message. You can also set up a phone number to accept texts from a laptop. I can do whatever on my bank by just calling. It would be a bit weird to never be able to pitch in on meals with a $ transfer app, but I suppose when you run 2 tech companies you're probably paying most of the time, or you just take a note and t…

Do you call via landline? I don’t know anyone who even still has one.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#397

Post by AlexanderYamanu »

jfyi wrote: post #253
dfc wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I saw that and also took it to mean the person didn't read the article. A text to your phone number? The article never mentions SMS. Heck I think the 2g/3g "feature" does not even require the phone to even have a SIM installed. This next sentence also seems to have been written without reading the article: "This can be turned off, since implementation."

The poster is giving information relevant only to the European Union ("112"). They are talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location I believe. I don't think it indicates their article reading either way and wouldn't personally wager a guess. They are just adding their own personal experience to the conversation.

I have read the article. It's speculative and not a reveal of anything new. All is ITU spec and came down from there. So there is quite some overlap in emergency service short code regions. Another poster mentions 'ping', which is called pinprick for 112, which does work always, but requires authorization to be used. That I can confirm from experience.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#398

Post by wodenokoto »

I thought one of the selling points of 3g was gps like precision in dense urban areas where gps signals would bounce too much for precise location and therefore mobile carriers didn’t need to ask for gps.

With that being said, my 10th floor apartment has a 5g radio installed by one of the major carriers and I am still placed one block wrong when looking on Google Maps.

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#399

Post by lugu »

vlovich123 wrote: post #75
tekla wrote: post #4

How is this news? Why wouldn't carriers be able to ask your phone about what it thinks its location is?

The can ask but your phone maybe doesn’t have to tell them by default / you can opt out

Yes but phone carriers are required by the FCC to achieve specific deployment goals. Also it isn't just about GPS data, it also include barometric data.

https://www.theindustrycouncil.org/post/911-location-accurac...

Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

#400

Post by Jolter »

wodenokoto wrote: post #398

I thought one of the selling points of 3g was gps like precision in dense urban areas where gps signals would bounce too much for precise location and therefore mobile carriers didn’t need to ask for gps. With that being said, my 10th floor apartment has a 5g radio installed by one of the major carriers and I am still placed one block wrong when looking on Google Maps.

I worked in telecoms back then, and I don’t recall 3G having any precise location mechanism. Most handsets back then did not have GPS receivers, and as such they could only tell you a pretty rough estimate of your position, based on multiteration from nearby cell towers. The best I could get was within a couple of hundred meters in an urban area.

4G (LTE) networks had more cell sites so could give better precision multilateration, but by then smartphones were taking over the market and they usually had GPS receivers.

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