What makes burner/trap phones untraceable by the police?
In: Technology
The phone is bought at a physical location for cash. There is, therefore, no record of who bought the phone or who currently owns it. The phones are pre-paid with a number of minutes of talk time that is included in the sales price, so they already have a number and available air time(they can also have their minutes recharged, but that’s more for people who legitimately buy them as a cheap option to have a phone when they can’t afford something better- which is the intended use of such phones).
While a phone’s location can be tracked by cell towers (it’s pretty simple, but not going to get in to how that works) the phone has to be turned on, so a smart user will also only turn the phone on when they are going to be placing a call, and will not place a call from a location that can be easily tied to themselves nor reuse locations with any sort of pattern that could be determined, or just throw the phone away and get a new one after one or two uses (this last being why it’s called a burner phone- you use it and ‘burn’ it).
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