• Off Topic

  • Cell Tower location triangulation counter messurement

  • Dde0u

    • Post #5

    HabibHabibHabib When the phone modem would not always connect to the strongest signal and if the modem would connect randomly, I mean in another way than defauld, then the location tracking would fall from 1meter accuracy to 500meters or more.

    Cellular sites know which direction a device is located in, and that is still true even if a device connects to a site that doesn't have the strongest signal. The situation isn't that the device carefully (or less-carefully) figures out where it is and then tells the cellular sites. The cellular sites know where the device is.

    Cellular networks are designed to be tracking networks. The genuinely reliable way to avoid being tracked by a cellular network is to turn the cellular modem off.

        Yes the phone broadcasts radio signals which nearby cell towers can see. Even if the phone isnt connecting to any tower the towers still sees it and can see with what power the phones signal reaches them and by comparing this between a few towers can calculate location. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateration

        de0u The genuinely reliable way to avoid being tracked by a cellular network is to turn the cellular modem off.

        if one puts the main profile in airplane mode and always has it on, does this protect one even if you change profiles, etc? will it always stay on airplane mode with no chance of leaks when turning the phone on or off, or switching profiles, etc?

        • de0u replied to this.

            • Dde0u

              • Post #8

              rellhom if one puts the main profile in airplane mode and always has it on, does this protect one even if you change profiles, etc?

              I think so.

              rellhom will it always stay on airplane mode with no chance of leaks when turning the phone on or off, or switching profiles, etc?

              Those who seek a high degree of assurance, especially about what the hardware does when GrapheneOS is not running, may wish to work together on hiring the appropriate sort of hardware expertise: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/19502-can-mobile-phones-be-tracked-when-theyre-switched-off/30

                  Velocity9490 no. It would have to be a system app or a driver or just the part which is in co troll of the cell modem behaviour

                    de0u I do get what you say. I don't know why my question is misunderstood in every possible way imaginable. Again back in the day of the first cellphones, the location tracking possibilities by the cell tower providers where limited to a few hundred meters. Is that correct? Nowdays the triangulation is more precise, with an accurary up to +-2meters is this correct? And if the phone modem now would change it's behaviour in response times (forced delays) than the cell tower would make a false assumption where the device is located, or the data would be unusable at all. The outcome is that we are back at the "few hundred meter's range" like in the old days.
                    The question is if that statement is theoretically correct and if an (system app or driver) could easily archive this behaviour.
                    So 1:
                    is the statement true?
                    and 2:
                    would it be easy to archive?
                    are the main 2 points here.
                    Nothing what I red in the answers answer the question jet.
                    The fact that the cell network has tracking by design does not negate my questions by default.

                        HabibHabibHabib you can hypotetically change the way baseband works but you have no way over how this signal is received and processed. So the answer is, no, you can't have it your way. The only way how to avoid cellular tracking is airplane mode or device turned off.

                          The cellular network has to know where to route your calls.

                          Figuring out ways to confuse it does not strike me as productive.

                            HabibHabibHabib Again back in the day of the first cellphones, the location tracking possibilities by the cell tower providers where limited to a few hundred meters. Is that correct?

                            That sounds plausible.

                            HabibHabibHabib Nowdays the triangulation is more precise, with an accurary up to +-2meters is this correct?

                            I have heard people expressing worry about that, but I don't know that to be true. I am skeptical that it's that good in general, though I admit I haven't read up on this recently.

                            HabibHabibHabib And if the phone modem now would change it's behaviour in response times (forced delays) than the cell tower would make a false assumption where the device is located, or the data would be unusable at all.

                            If the sole issue were round-trip time, sure. But cell sites also know direction (see "beamforming"). No matter how long a mobile device hypothetically delayed the time of a response, the response would still come from a measurable direction.

                            The cell sites are genuinely different than in "the old days". At least in urban areas, there are many more of them, and they do a lot more digital signal processing. This isn't a situation where a simple trick on handsets will turn back the clock on tracking.

                                    HabibHabibHabib Nowdays the triangulation is more precise, with an accurary up to +-2meters is this correct?

                                    If your in a fully functioning 5g area and you have 5g enabled in Sim settings then yes it can be around a few metres or so. If using LTE/4g only as recommended by the project then it wont be as accurate and more like 100m or slightly more.

                                      de0u thank you for your answer. So what you are telling me is, that there are more parameters nowadays, at least one, which have an effect on the accuracy of location pinpointing. So it would be definetly not as easy as i mentioned to reset the clock, which is basicly the actual answer to my question.

                                          4 days later

                                          HabibHabibHabib So what you are telling me is, that there are more parameters nowadays, at least one, which have an effect on the accuracy of location pinpointing.

                                          Yes. Here is some information from a cellular equipment manufacturer: https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2020/12/5g-positioning--what-you-need-to-know

                                          Beam forming is a big deal. It's s large part of what makes modern cellular (and Wi-Fi) go fast. And it inherently involves angle estimation.

                                          I think the situation is:

                                          1. It would be possible for a 5G device to deliberately fuzz time-based position signalling to some extent,
                                          2. This would require modifying the baseband firmware,
                                          3. Cell-site angle estimation would still work,
                                          4. The cellular network could over time detect device fuzzing of time-based signals, because the time-based measurements would consistently disagree with the angle-based measurements, whereas they should differ randomly (and less) for a cooperating device.

                                          Again, if all of the position determination happened on the device then the device could effectively misdirect, but modern cellular networks do a lot more position determination via powerful signal processing at the cell sites.