Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Smart phone? No! Tracker!

I don't have a cell phone of any description, don't need one, and don't want one. If I had any doubts, reading That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker has erased them.

Like you, Jon, I'm one of the "Unreachables."

That articles is, indeed, frightening, but I have a recollection of reading, maybe at FTM, that an iPhone's GPS (maybe that of all cell phones) can be turned off, and if it's true that's a fact, the article is seriously remiss in failing to mention it.

Edit: The article could have made a neat point by mentioning that Katie Holmes used a disposable to plan and execute her escape.

And make sure to go through the article referenced in the first sentence of the second paragraph of that news analysis: More Demands on Cell Carriers in Surveillance . That should freak you out even more.

Big Brother ... more than ever before

Not so fast. Depending on your phone and your carrier, either GPS or cell tower triangulation is used to pinpoint your (phone's) location. Shutting down the phone, or better yet, removing the battery is the only way you can be sure the device cannot be traced via either method. And the article does mention this, including the fact that removing the battery of an iPhone breaks the warranty.

I followed all that in the article, and I'll still call its author remiss, but now for not making it crystal clear that turning GPS off is not a solution in some/all (?) instances.

I'm confused... Will turning GPS off, as on an iPhone (Google Search...interesting secondary links), ever accomplish what many users undoubtedly (still) think it will accomplish, or will you always be trackable by triangulation, and in that case, is there still benefit to be derived from turning GPS off, or is Apple just laughing at its customers in providing the option?

Thanks.

Edit: And is the triangulation going on continuously as you phone, browse, e-mail, etc, or is it just a back-door if somebody wants to find you and your GPS is turned off? (If it's a continuous thing, it seems like it must eat up an enormous amount of resources.)

You will always be trackable by triangulation but there are two caveats

1. Triangulation is not as accurate as GPS positioning. Under ideal conditions, GPS can pinpoint your location within 35 feet or less. Triangulation can find the building you are in but not much closer than that.
2. In rural areas where there may only be one tower receiving the signal and therefore you cannot be triangulated, but you can still be tracked to within the several square miles served by that tower.

If you are seriously concerned about being tracked your options are few.

• Avoid the use of cell phones (or landline phones for that matter) altogether.
• Use only prepaid phones, only turn it on to make a call and discard each immediately after any use
• Best of all, avoid any activities that would make you a person of interest to authorities
• By-the-way have you ever noticed how quickly your browser accumulates tracking cookies — even if you have the option to accept cookies turned off? You may want to quit using the internet while you are at it.

Joemikeb hits the nail(s) on the head: every cell phone user can be more or less accurately localized at all times. Single use of prepaid phones fairly effectively breaks the digital link between user and phone (although there may be others), but this also makes the use of such phones (too) much of a hassle for the average person. So on we go.

Because of this and other developments the privacy of the average citizen has IMO already been irreparably damaged, and the effects of this will only get worse as time progresses. Welcome to our Brave New World, whose main determinant for the consumer now only seems to be when you will be screwed (not to put too fine a point on it), not if.

Thanks guys.

> [...] every cell phone user can be more or less accurately localized at all times.

It's the phones (the users only by implication) that can be localized at all times, but is every phone being localized at all times?


If your GPS is turned off, is your provider triangulating on your phone in its place? Can your mom locate you?

Turning your GPS off does prevent your location from being recorded in your pictures' EXIF (I think that's correct) data, but does it provide any further benefits?

> By-the-way have you ever noticed how quickly your browser accumulates tracking cookies — even if you have the option to accept cookies turned off? You may want to quit using the internet while you are at it.

I delete my unwanted cookies and clear Safari's cache neurotically often despite the fact that I've never run across anything that's given me pause to think I was being tracked. (I can't wait to see the offers that pour in after all the entities who've that've been tracking me have correlated and cross-referenced their data. )

No. Yesterday I ran Cookie Stumbler to remove all the tracking cookies on my system. Restarted Safari went to one site, total time on the internet maybe seven minutes. Reran Cookie Stumbler and it found and removed 120+ new tracking cookies in Safari. If you don't want to be tracked, stay off of the internet. FineTunedMac is apparently the ONLY site I visit that does not add tracking cookies.

Yes, whenever a cell phone is switched on, it regularly pings the nearest tower(s), and all carriers keep complete records of this type of information. Actual tracking is usually only activated when someone calls 911 or when authorized government agencies request it, and this may be facilitated by the phone's software or firmware. For 911 localization purposes ATT and T-Mobile most often use(d)* rough location by triangulation, while Sprint and Verizon use the GPS chips in their phones.

Your mother may be able to (roughly) locate you in certain circumstances based on your phone's location, if both of you have the appropriate app (running) on your phones, and if permissions from both of you are on file with the carrier that must provide this service. So this is not nearly as 'full coverage' as the 911 tracking system.

*) depending on the presence of GPS functionality in the phone. This has been increasing over time.

Although maybe a cautious statement, I don't believe that any significant number of cell phones are pinging towers or GPS while off, including the iphone. There might be a few, but I challenge you to come up with some known examples.

Leaving on either of these functions will eat up your battery pretty fast.

You are correct, and in fact (and under normal conditions) no cell phone is pinging towers or responding to pings when switched off, something I mentioned in my previous post. The caution to remove the battery in the text you quote was only made to ensure any GPS chip is disabled in case turning it off with software isn't easy or obvious, but also to thwart nefarious and distinctly abnormal communications controlled by malware or secret soft- or firmware in phones that for all intents and purposes appear to be switched off. I didn't mean to imply that the latter is happening, only that it's possible.

120+ tracking cookies? Wow! (Are you running Ghostery?)

If it's not an intrusion, I'd like to visit your web site to see what I can see and possibly accumulate a bit more info for my "Privacy" thread.

As for staying off the Internet, my understanding is that cookies don't transmit info in real time...only when you re-visit a web site, so wouldn't clearing them before you re-visit the web sites that planted them defeat their having been planted in the first place?

Edit: We're beginning to drift off-topic, so if you think a new thread is appropriate, please....