A have always been told that to get a geolocation of mobile phones there is the

Question

A have always been told that to get a geolocation of mobile phones there is the need 'ping' it with at least three cells. So actually, a standard and basic triangulation would just get from three stations the response time of the mobile phones and calculate its coordinations. But i understood that triangulation can be made also 'passively' and that the some servuce provider have a database of past locations for law enforcement.

So how does actually geo location of GSM devices work? Is possibible to spoof it just just altering response times from mobile phone os?

Explanation / Answer

There are a number of databases that contain pre-calculated position data based on delay timings from cell towers. Typically, they are no more accurate than around 1/2 the size of the cell (which of course varies depending on the frequency and location).

Indeed, these are commonly used to speed up the calculations of GPS data on smartphones. In fact, until the iPhone 5, you had to have GSM turned on to support position finding using GPS (a mad choice that thankfully, Apple have now got rid of).

There are similar databases for Wi-Fi networks as well.

So the data is not just used for law enforcement but benefits all smartphone users.

I suppose it would be possible to throw the position data out fairly readily. You can get devices to do this to GPS systems too. The main problem is that the calculations will be built into the system data and so will be very hard to get at, you would have to have a seriously hacked phone.

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