How does your phone constantly track you without you knowing and still tracks location even if you have GPS turned off?
In: Technology
The idea of “GPS turned off” isn’t what you think it is. The current 4G and 5G phone networks need precision time from GPS to work efficiently, so the GPS chip is never turned off.
The “GPS on/off” setting only impacts some API that the applications loaded onto your phone are supposed to respect. Is there another API that only the phone manufacturer knows about that doesn’t turn off according to this setting? There could easily be. You’d never know.
You’re either getting data via cell or wifi. With WiFi they can reasonably assume where you are. With cell data it’s essentially terrestrial gps. Your phone “sees” multiple radio towers and those towers have a known transmission pattern. Using which towers your phone sees they can determine how much overlap there is between the footprints and determine with pretty significant accuracy where you are; the more towers, the more accurate. Also, if you connect to a building’s installed cell repeater, they know you’re inside that building.
Pro tip: Leave cellphone at home running app or show while you go across town to commit crime. The d.a will request geotag it’ll look like u weren’t prepared and that will be the nail in your coffin and they’ll feel dumb n likely take it as it wasn’t u ….unless you did a sloppy job.
There’s three and a half ways that phones track locations.
The first is obviously GPS. The second one is cellphone towers.
The third is WiFi networks. There are maps of WiFi networks that you can use to find your position to a pretty accurate degree. This is why an application that wants the local WiFi name actually needs the Location permission in Android devices.
An extension of the third one is for the ability of a WiFi network to know your relative position inside that network. For example, a shopping mall has many access points that you connect to. Even if you’re not connected to the network, your phone is pinging for available networks. Those access points can identify your phone^* , and then they can infer where you are in the mall accordingly. Fortunately Android10 and higher randomize the identifier sent in these requests, but iPhone doesn’t.
Latest Answers