So the goverment can track our cell phones now but my question is can we track each other's??????
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So the goverment can track our cell phones now but my question is can we track each other's??????
pls send me a reply if you know sommething about tracking cell phone!
P.S do not send toodavanced things.
P.S i am a beginer!
The only thing I know about tracking cel phones is via emergency location like for 911. I do not know how it works, but for a nornal person to gain such information (in my mind) would need to know how the tracking satellites are used, and I do not think just anybody can use them.
Google yeilded http://www.wired.com/news/technology...2,9502,00.html
Use it. Damn it.
yeah i heard about the 911 tracking service, but many areas have not yet spent the tax payer money to spend on the 911 trace systems, only a few cities have it such as large cities. anyways i've heard about tracing cell calls through your puter, like labtop, hooking the cell phone onto your labtop (usb) there are some companies that offer software and hardware for such, other than that never actually seen a cell call traced except for tv.
I've heard that 911, and other emergancy channels, use GPS to trace locations. That's according to some salesman guy at Radio Shack though and Verizon phones, so I don't know how true that is. Makes sense though, the GPS satellites are already up, why not use them?
How civilians can trace each other, I have no idea...
alpha
The trace ur phone by using like a triangular thereom or something. I kinda forget how its done but i think its by like 120 degree segments of 3 towers. Its pretty accurate. Cellphones r a whole different story. I'm not that knowledgable but there r sid's...gsm's...espi's or something...i dunno but there r a whole lot of numbers involved into 1 phone to identify it. You can however change these with a program code that cellular providers use to program ur phone. I know mine for my panasonic phone...its #7764726# (spells out program) ....lets ya into a whole bunch of cool features. But changing some of these tags r illegal...not sure which ones though. Well i'm way off topic but they trace ur phone by doing the triangular thing with 3 towers...i heard its pretty accurate...like a couple feet or a square meter or something.
dont know about it but this is just a guess!!! okie every mobile phone has their unique license no. (like us our name)nokia for example type *#0000# or *06# a license no. will apper on the screen that correspond to that, if your phone get or transmit a signal maybe the protocol of the phone is their license no. and btw mobile company hav their own cell sites scattered her in earth or on you country that bounce signal going to the server, reciever and to your phone maybe that how it works. ive seen the series in smallville were lex tries to locate his pal who was stuck under a deep excavation the mobile company provide lex info were the signal bounce and wat specific location or area then there they start searching...hehehe just a wild guess or if your mobile phone is wap able then satellite can locate you... heheheheh
Well, since 9/11, every cell phone produced has a little chip that tells the government of its location. And, if you are with AT&T, and have a phone that has mMode (the wireless internet) you can use a feature called Friend Finder, inwhich you dial the number, and if they other party agrees, it will display the cross streets inwhich the other party is located.
Fun eh?
In the UK there is a package sold by the carphone warehouse that allows you to track your employees phones,
Bascally what happens is that you add the phone to your list, i think you can add up to 4 phones on the standard package, and then you log on to the internet and it gives you a map of where the phone is.
Im not to sure whether you just add the IMEA number to the list or have to ring up off that phone to add it, You certainly have to give some details over the phone to add a mobile
I sure with some social engineering it would be possible to add someones phones, all be it unethical...........
i2c
The method of locating any radio transmitter relies on various methods of RDF (radio direction Finder/ing) and triangulation..
Now the RDF relies on getting a direction or bearing to the transmitter..this can be by using one of the following
Directional Aerial ..rotate the aerial until you get the strongest signal..
Doplershift.. uses a special aerial and a computer to get the direction
TDDM - Time Domain Distance measurement
with analogue transmitters the first two are the easiest to use..
But with GSM/ Digital Phones TDDM is about the only way..
Any of these need two or more sites to get a fix on the transmitter.. the TDDM needs only accurate after 3 sites..
The first 2 you can build the equipment yourself..and then a map and a compass. the third youu need to talk to the celphone company.. a map and a protractor..
\
Just working on GSM.. when a gsm phone communicates to a base it sends various information, normaly based on the contents in the SIM card (analogue sends the phones serial no) the base reqularly interogates the phone and updates its cypher.. in this it estimates the distance (time taken for the signal to do a return trip less the time taken for th ephone to process) if the distance is greater than the allocation for the cell..Goodbye.. you are out of the picture or transfered onto another cell..
now if you have three cell bases one has TDDM for Jo Criminal at 7km, cell 2 has him at 15 km and cell 3 at 35km.. the 3 circles should intersect at one point close to where Jo is.. try it out.. the more cells that recieve his signal the more accurate the location.. 3 cells theorectily can get better than 10m from the target (this is based on the accuracey of the time reference at ALL of the cells).. the British telecom WAS able to use this to pin point criminals for the police.. but about 5 years ago.. the civil liberties groups managed to ban the practice..
Now with an analogue signal.. it is expensive for the Base station to be fitted with TDDM or any type of RDF for that matter.. a reciever and a RDF Aerial either directional or dopler and a method of decoding the engineering channel to find the the serial number of the phone..well stuff that, just find the person talking and zero in.. 2 direction readings from a suitable distance will generally give very accurate results, a third or more normaly clears up most errors..
for more on this subject Google the following.. Ham Radio, Amateur Radio, RDF, Radio direction Finding, GSM, Direction Finding, dopler shift radio direction finding, Radio Direction Finding, hidden transmitter compititions..
Have fun
Cheers
[edit]Geez did I write all that..shite..
Just a footnote TDDM may be referenced as TDM in some texts.. this was written from memory most of the details should be able to be cross checked.. I did put most of it into my own terms.. sorry if it confuses.. cheers [/edit]
This is a bit off-topic.
But does anyone remember Mitnick and the S.A.S. ?
Heh...
That reminds me:
Does anyone remember how easy it is to listen in on calls made on cell phones and cordless phones? I mean **** I remember back like a year ago turning the TV on a certain channel and then turning on a phone I moded, and playing with the channel switching features of the phone, I could hear my neighboors phone calls.
Cell phones are even easier. Well, usually. A police scanner at the store can pick up not only those but also cordless phone calls. Great for playing pranks on your friends.
Heh, Great for the bastard that wont pay money he owes you:
"Tom remember when I said I worked for the CIA? Well We had tapped your phone and they know you were talking to your dealer last night. Now since we are close buddies Ill let you bribe me ok?"
Heh.
the S.A.S ohhhhhh yea there brave set of men, dont forget the S.B.S either
My Favorite Subject…
Nice post Und3ertak3r, RF direction finding is a science on it’s own.
Cell phone tracking is just getting to the point where it almost works. At least it can find you in a specific neighborhood, only because your SIM is identified to which cell site you are connected too. A triangulation algorithm is actually used all the time, millions of times a day. For simplicity, your phone's cell site signal strength is known for all adjacent cell sites within a surrounding area, when a signal threshold is met, control of your particular phone is handed over to the strongest site. This isn't really that simple because the system is vastly complex and many sites are operating at CPU maximum so the strongest site is not always the controller. In fact you could be connected and the system could not know your are there. How many times have you called a phone to get.... "please hold while the subscriber is located.” And after a few seconds the phone rings. The cell system will have a record of what site you were last confirmed and authenticated on and then through an algorithm it will transmit a "hello" signal on all adjacent sites trying to provoke a response to a single cell phone. Then if no response is received it will go up to the city level and transmit, etc. All in a matter of seconds. You want to see some computing power? Imagine tracking 5 million individual wireless computers across 200 cell sites in only 1 area, now multiply that by 500 cities. And that is just to keep the phones connected, now throw in real-time direction finding. AMAZING.
For this entire thing to work all the time, 100 percent- you have to be targeted. In fact there is so much information that most of it is dropped in almost real time in large markets like N.Y or L.A.
To answer some questions:
There is no GPS receiver in 99.9999 percent of cell phones and there isn’t going to be for a long time. In fact GPS doesn’t even play a role in the system, that’s sales talk BS. You can buy specialized models that do have a GPS receiver and antenna and you can plug a GPS into the phone. You may be thinking, well they have GPS receivers in the cell sites so that is what they use, the truth is, that is a licensed emitter with the latitude and longitude as well as antenna height already recorded and encoded into the system. Like Und3ertak3r pointed out, it’s all based on signal timing. It is already known what propagation delays should be over short distances.
It’s extremely difficult to change any number in a cell phone, outside swapping a prefabricated SIM card from an expert. And even so, there are methods to scrub bogus equipment identifiers that run each night (not once in a while, each night). For example, the current billing list is downloaded into a market area control switch and all numbers not matching last months billing cycle are eliminated. Now each time you turn on your phone or come in from an “out of coverage” area the phone is re-authenticated and that list is looked at, if your number was scrubbed you don’t get on. In the GSM model this device that holds current subscribers is called a DAP and the control switch is called an MSO. In addition, newer technologies are encrypted such as T-mobile and M-Mode and Nextel. So you have to break the algorithm, fabricate a bogus SIM and then beat the scrub. In gore’s favor, all applied applications I have seen are all UNIX.
WAP has nothing to do with satellites. Not even close in technology or frequency spectrum.
It’s not as easy as it used to be to listen to calls, especially on the encrypted systems. It’s now more fun to listen to the drive-up at Wendy’s and Taco bell.
/EDIT oh in the early 90's the USA made it illegal to sell scanners that could scan the cell phone spectrum at the time. It's changed a bit since then but newer scanners will not scan older cell phone sites without modification. So buy and old scanner or get out the soldering iron and take out some diodes.
hi
one of the biggest cellphonecompanies in sweden has a option this kind and if you are member of this you can wahtch you freinds where they are... so i recond it is possible... ist gps you know;) (the companys website.. www.telia.se)
As far as listening in to phones, all you have to have is a scanner and listen between the frequencies of 880-930mhz I think. I can pick up lots of cell phone calls.
Kinda makes me think twice before I start talking about something important on the phone.
http://www.snapshield.com/www_proble...er/All_you.htm
Nice little page that has some monitoring info.
Gore...correct me if i'm wrong but cant you only eavesdrop if the cell phone call is made in analog mode and not digital??? Digital transmits the data in bits...Analog transmits in wavelengths and frequencies therefore its able to pick it up via a scanner or radio.
true.. about the analogue phone conversations these are made using PM(Phase Modulation) or FM Frequency Modulation) and no encryption, and any FM reciever can recieve the chatter.. But with GSM/Digital well You are still transmitting using radio waves.. and the data has to be encoded on to a Carrier.. this is done using one of many FSK (Frequency Shift Keying) Modulation methods and in some cases it is FM modulated with QAM audio signal.. this should be familure to us computer types especially those who use ANY modem..Quote:
Gore...correct me if i'm wrong but cant you only eavesdrop if the cell phone call is made in analog mode and not digital??? Digital transmits the data in bits...Analog transmits in wavelengths and frequencies therefore its able to pick it up via a scanner or radio.
So any one with a suitably modified receiver will be able to recieve the data stream.. then all you need is the right software and plenty of time....
but as for wavelengths? WTF are you talking about wavelength the distance traveled by a radiowave from one cycle peak to the next.. ie Broadcast FM 88 to 108Mhz .. 100Mhz has a wave length of 3metre's .. what this has to do with the difference between analogue and digital transmission..i don't know..
check this url http://www.geocities.com/socalgal2k/fmodx.html
BTW: Have a good read of Roadclosed's post.. that is bloody good info.. excuse the pun.. but RC is tuned in..
Cheers
iiiiif I'm not mistaken, the GSM system works on Repeaters, IE, having a few antenas around that burst signals out to the world, tho only any one SIM card is able to interpret it's own call.
so it works the same was as normal triangulation, just have to syncronice the repeaters so they broadcast at exactly the same time, then you can check the cellphones responce time and work out a distance based on the lap time.
Cell phones are actually connected to multiple cell sites at the same time. A typical digital cell phone in a large city will see something like 5 cell sites; all on different channels with one being reserved solely for control of the local network. In the iDen system they use M16-QAM to actually modulate the radio signal and a bastardized version of TDDM is used to transfer the intelligence or data across the system. Your voice is actually severely compressed using a VSELP vocoder before it is modulated. A combination of cell phone logic and site logic actually determine where the phone is in a spatial environment. For instance an iDen readio is pretty damn smart. When you aren’t talking, it’s monitoring the signal quality of all it’s local cell sites. Since the system is handling literally hundred if not thousands of cell phones on a single controller base station; the phone does a major job in passing information back to the controller. For instance, when the phone notices that Cell A is better than Cell site C; it can send a request to be handed off to the Cell site with a better quality signal.
This is all monitored and adjusted by engineers who tabulate the call volumes, transient subscribers passing through the cell (cars) and number of long time subscribers (houses) as well as call drop rates (incomplete calls, busy cells etc.).
The control channel can even adjust maximum power outputs of each phone based on volume of a cell. In today’s environment cellular saturation is a problem because there are only so many frequencies. Often power output is reduced to re-use frequencies as needed on adjacent cells. For instance; on a heavily traveled piece of highway in a major city, you may pass through 15 cell sites in as little as 2.5 miles of road. They are hidden everywhere from light poles to schools to church steeples. Look for them, they could be little flat rectangles on the side of your local Wall Mart or Bank, aimed at specific pieces of land, not to mention the omni directional di-poles or Yagis hanging from Towers, but you rarely see those these days in high concentration areas. They are to broadband in their selectivity.
In fact some companies have begun to pioneer cellular switching into a 3rd dimension: altitude. Meaning not only do you switch cells in a horizontal measure, but also in a vertical measure. Meaning you can switch 2 or 3 times while riding an elevator or climbing a mountain, and be on the same controller site. The antennas are aimed at specific altitudes and designed to minimize RF reflection. Cool stuff.
It’s is true that a Sim card interprets the phone for retrieval of a call and the systems does broadcast the request over all frequencies, but once the connection is made, only an assigned channel carries the data and it’s usually assigned a slot on the T1 into a phone switch. The radio channels are actually multiplexed so a single frequency is actually carrying several phone calls. The level of multiplexing is actually determined by signal characteristics for a site. For example a site with bad problems might only carry 4 channels per frequency but a site in a good RF environment may carry 12 or 15 channels per frequency.
There is also another layer below the Sim card. The terminology varies among different types of systems but in the GSM model it is an equipment identifier. Like a MAC address it’s hard coded and that is the 1st level of authentication and a lot of communication happens at that layer. After that the Sim comes in to play, which is a storage device that contains a soft pin, a hard pin and the phone number, I guess this is sort of like a digital certificate.