Your Cell Phone

[JohnyMac]

I attended a Ham Mtg last evening in my attempt to broaden my knowledge in ham radio.

Before the actual meeting started, the President of the club had the #2 guy of the 911 task force for the county give a talk about 911.

One thing we learned was that 75% of all 911 calls now come from a cell phone. The supervisor was proud to share with the group that all cell phone; whether they are turned on or not can be triangulated to within 3-9 meters.

One of the club members questioned him pretty thoroughly on the subject until he started to become defensive on the subject. With that said he told the group that if he plugged in a cell phone telephone number a clearinghouse in Vermont could give him a cell phones coordinates in seconds within 9 meters. It didn't matter what kind of phone you have or whether the phone was on or off. The only way to defeat that was to remove the battery from your phone.

O-Kay I get it BUT for you folks that have phones where you can not remove the battery...FYI!

This is WBI5289 clear and monitoring channel 16.

[crudos]

The removing the battery part sounds a bit fishy to me. Turning off you phone completely off should be enough. Dunno about smart phones though, maybe you can't turn them off completely without removing the battery? I just have a old pre-paid phone for emergencies.

[v0dka]

As long as the phone has a battery with juice its on. even if you turn it off it really still is on.
You computer is the same way, It just operates on a very low level.

you can remove the battery from any phone. Like for mine you need to remove a sticker and use a torx screw driver.

[Outonowhere]

As long as the phone has a battery with juice its on. even if you turn it off it really still is on.
You computer is the same way, It just operates on a very low level.

you can remove the battery from any phone. Like for mine you need to remove a sticker and use a torx screw driver.

 [URL=http://www.smileyvault.co

[thatGuy]

what JMac and v0dka said.. it's the way of the world my friends..

[thatGuy]

So long as you're willing to carry it across... you know I can't cross the river!  [url=http://yoursmiles.org/p-m

[APX808]

What that guy told you is utter bullshit.

The triangulation based on signal power from different antennas, works pretty good but has a big error, kind of 100 meters in a big city with plenty of antennas near you, if there are not many antennas around the error can be pretty fucking huge, like kilometres.
Some commercial applications use that, google maps is one of them.

Civilian GPS has a precision of 20 meters and military ones 5 meters, many cells have GPS but don't broadcast their location, at least not officially

A few years ago, the notorious hacker Kevin Mitnik was being chased down by LE, and they knew the zone they guy was operating by triangulating his cell, but that gave LE like 3 blocks where the guy could be, so what they did is to go with multiple vans to drive around the zone and triangulate the signal, and that way they were able to catch the guy.

Also, as far as I know, a turned off cell doesn't transmit anything, I heard many times of LE waiting for a cell to turn on to see where it is in missing persons or kidnap cases.

A few years ago I had some meetings and we took the battery off the phones, it was like a gesture, because its the easiest place to hide a bug, today you could put your phones in a Faraday bag to be sure its not transmitting anything.

[WhiteWolfReloaded]

Turn your cell phone off. Remove the battery. Hold down on the power button for 1 minute to drain the auxiliary power (also can be done to reset your phone to factory standards if it's glitching). Cover generously in aluminum foil. Job finished.

[JohnyMac]

WW, I also use aluminum foil in all of my hats and caps. 

[WhiteWolfReloaded]

WW, I also use aluminum foil in all of my hats and caps. 

Don't we all?