I've read up on the pinging of cell phones to find a location of the user. What I'm curious about is whether or not a cell phone service provider can ping a cell phones location at a particular date in history? In other words, could a cell phone service provider use triangulation from the available cell towers to provide the location of a particular phone from, say, two weeks ago? This assumes that a call or text was made from the phone, of course, in that particular time frame.
alan
I don't think so. They might be able to use the records and see which cell tower was used to make the call/send the text. And *maybe* from that data they might be able to determine the distance from that tower. But that only gives a radius in which the phone would have been.
Pinging of cell phones (unless I'm seriously misinformed) involves sending signals from multiple cell towers and measuring the time it takes for that signal to reach the phone and return. Then, with the multiple tower data, they can triangulate an approximate location. But when a call is made or text is sent, it only uses a single cell tower to connect that communication.
I believe your phone is constantly sending signal strength information to the network the whole time it is turned on (in order to determine it's proximity to the towers and which cell it's located in). I don't think it requires you to actually make a phone call (think smart phone). That may be different than "pinging".
In addition, in the name of safety, the US government passed a law requiring that ALL cell phones have a GPS tracking device embedded.
With this information available, I'm sure the phone company utilizes the GPS information to manage their phone network.
This information is more than likely stored by the phone company for a specific amount of time, probably 6 months to several years, and stored forever by the government.
I have a spot on a hill overlooking a town, where I have full strength signal, but cannot call out. I can call the phone provider are speak to them clear as day, but am unable to make a call to anybody else. They have allocated their network resources to serve the largest cluster of phones located in town and along a freeway. They explained to me that I was located at the edge of a cell and that was why I couldn't call out.
So yes I believe- "they" could tell where your phone was 2 weeks ago even if you didn't make any calls or text messages during that time.
It would probably take a court order to see the meta-data they have stored.
https://www.ted.com/talks/malte_spitz_your_phone_company_is_watching?language=en
Since this video was made, I am sure the amount of information being generated and stored by your phone company has increased significantly.
It does have a neat graphic showing a broad view of a communication network.
I used a service for short time that could give location and speed of survey crews. This worked as long as the phone was on and within cell coverage. We now use a service that has the GPS in the truck. Some would call this being Big Brother and I would say that some crews need a Big Brother. Sad but true.
lmbrls, post: 377816, member: 6823 wrote: I used a service for short time that could give location and speed of survey crews. This worked as long as the phone was on and within cell coverage. We now use a service that has the GPS in the truck. Some would call this being Big Brother and I would say that some crews need a Big Brother. Sad but true.
It is sad that there are some "bad apples" that need this kind of supervision. It makes things worse for the rest of us that just want to get our work done in a timely and efficient manner.
This article will show you how to look at location history through google if the gps location is on.
http://trendblog.net/cant-remember-last-night-google-location-history-can-help-you/
