Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the pinging of the phone would not share ip address
E911 would get bssid of the access point.
If they called. I'm not sure 911 can initiate a call back to a device that hasn't called before.
Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
501–510 of 622 posts
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
I turned off all cell carrier tracking 5 years ago. 100% of it. By canceling my cell phone subscription. I know I know, I must be amish, I have heard it all. But I run two tech companies, travel, have a family, and do most of the things most around here probably do other than doom scrolling. So much more time in my own head to think.
You could also turn your cell off/on as needed. Sure you can be "seen" when it's on, but when off, it's my understanding you can't.
You cant turn modern smartphones off.
You may think you can, but you cant.
What you could do is put them in a faraday cage if you wanted.
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#503My friend was going through a pretty massive depression after his mom passed. He'd been with my wife and I at our house for a number of hours talking through it, and apparently not texting his sisters back. They called in a welfare check. We live in a reasonably dense suburb. Police showed up at our front door and asked to speak with him. They just wanted to make sure he was doing OK. He asked them "how did you find…
Did the sisters know where you lived? Curious if the police provided them with an area and the sisters were able to give a proper address?
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
Runs 2 tech companies - the basic promise of the US is when you're rich you can do whatever the hell you want because you can pay people to handle stuff for you. But also, one doesn't always need a phone - phones can die, signal is not gauranteed. What are your "must have" things that require one to have a smart phone to participate? Assume the poster has a home phone, laptop, and credit card.
Small companies that are 100% FOSS with no VC investment, where everyone has to pull their own weight. I do not have a personal assistant or anything like that and navigate the real world, travel, etc, very often alone.
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Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#505I'll ask people, because I'm in the right circles. I want to know where it works. I've been VERY clear in my messaging to HN (on the RCS issue and having ear blown out by iPhone last week) that I am not going to glaze Apple even if the new modems they built interest me. They are usually sort of a neutral to me that has me more pissed off in the recent months than usual. Maybe send me one of your new devices if you do…
> triangulate Trilaterate :)
You're not wrong, but it's annoying even the FCC uses triangulate in their documents for it.
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
I turned off all cell carrier tracking 5 years ago. 100% of it. By canceling my cell phone subscription. I know I know, I must be amish, I have heard it all. But I run two tech companies, travel, have a family, and do most of the things most around here probably do other than doom scrolling. So much more time in my own head to think.
Cancel phone subscription and have family. I don’t understand how you still have family? You don’t have any emergencies?
Did people "have emergencies" before the invention of mobile phones?
Your question is silly
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could also turn your cell off/on as needed. Sure you can be "seen" when it's on, but when off, it's my understanding you can't.
You cant turn modern smartphones off. You may think you can, but you cant. What you could do is put them in a faraday cage if you wanted.
Please explain what this means, I can turn my cell phone off. How are they able to ping my phone if it has no power? Or are you saying even when you turn it off there's still some part of it that's energized or something?
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#508Earlier 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
Runs 2 tech companies - the basic promise of the US is when you're rich you can do whatever the hell you want because you can pay people to handle stuff for you. But also, one doesn't always need a phone - phones can die, signal is not gauranteed. What are your "must have" things that require one to have a smart phone to participate? Assume the poster has a home phone, laptop, and credit card.
The failure mode isn't as a tech company CEO. As you point out, if you're the CEO, you have the luxury of defining yourself unavailable as CEO whenever the hell you please. If the website is down out if business hours and you haven't made it someone else's problem that you're paying for it to stay up, it can just be down. No, the issue is as a father/mother/husband/wife/son/daughter to someone's you love dearly enough to consider them family, biological or otherwise.
It's rather dramatic, but the phone call/conversation I could never forgive myself for missing, is the last words of a loved one before they die, whether due to car crash or some other calamity (9/11). Or missing the opportunity to take the very next flight out to see them before they pass. You are free to treat your family, biological or chosen, as you see fit, I just know there are some phone calls I'd rather be woken up in the middle of the night for than miss. Reaching me via cellphone is more direct than trying to find whatever hotel I'm at since I'm on the road as CEO and talking to customers and vendors in person on the road as CEO, so calling my house phone doesn't help.
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh! So IIRC it used to be that the modem could only get a rough estimate of your location and typically Apple/Google's location infra(which combined wifi/blue and lately satellite position based shadow mapping) to determine a precise location. And law enforcement got precise info from _that_ infra(E911 requirements for every device). Clearly they don't need that now because 5g cell towers have gotten precise enough?…
5G isn’t inherently any more precise, but because of the higher frequency used in 5G, the radio signals are blocked by obstructions much more easily, so there must be many more 5G radios per unit area to provide coverage. And one feature of having many more base stations around is that triangulation of specific phone is much more accurate and precise because of how close the 5G base stations are to all 5G phones. 5G…
This is not true, 5G has multiple positioning improvements that are not related to higher frequencies. 5G has something called LMF (Location Management Function) that handles positioning of user clients through multiple means, like round trip time, angle of arrival, and dedicated 5G positioning reference signals.
You can read more about 5G positioning here:
https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2020/12/5g-positioning--wha...
https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2024/11/5g-advanced-positio...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.03361
https://research.chalmers.se/publication/542739/file/542739_...
Re: Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
You cant turn modern smartphones off. You may think you can, but you cant. What you could do is put them in a faraday cage if you wanted.
Please explain what this means, I can turn my cell phone off. How are they able to ping my phone if it has no power? Or are you saying even when you turn it off there's still some part of it that's energized or something?
The baseband isn’t controlled by you and can wake up without your knowledge.
It’s less clear what is the “art of the possible” vs. practical for people who aren’t actively under surveillance.