Can phone companies track missing persons using mobiles?

gerry87

Hey, does anybody know if phone companies are able to track missing persons using their mobile?

How would you go about it, would guards be able to? Do they need a warrant, would that be difficult to get?

7.Ronaldo

The technology is there but it would have to go through the Gardai.

The network can definitely locate what area the person is in if they are making calls from their mobile because the call is routed through the closest mast to the caller. It might also be possible to locate them if their phone is powered on and trying to connect to a mast but I'm not 100% on that one.

amazingemmet

Yeah they can track any mobile connected to their network if its on or not to within 12ft, I'm not sure if meteor or three can yet as they piggyback their signal in some places but the vodafone and o2 can. Needs be done through the guards

gerry87

ok thanks, ill get on to the guards.

Does anyone know if its a long paperwork process or a pretty immediate thing?

Walkman

amazingemmet wrote: »

Yeah they can track any mobile connected to their network if its on or not to within 12ft, I'm not sure if meteor or three can yet as they piggyback their signal in some places but the vodafone and o2 can. Needs be done through the guards

All networks can do this. If the person being looked for was on 3 or meteor then their location when on vodafones network is still tracked by their network. You would definately need the gardai involved as the network will not give out the location information without their involvement.

321654

yep, very closely too. The iPhone even does it.

Cryos

321654 wrote: »

yep, very closely too. The iPhone even does it.

Well thats not entirely true, the operator can get a more defined location to where you are within 300m depending on how many Masts are in the vacinity. The GPS in the iphone doesnt link back to the Mobile network, its a seperate piece of equipment entirely.

robinph

amazingemmet wrote: »

Yeah they can track any mobile connected to their network if its on or not to within 12ft,

Not going to be connected to any network if the phone is switched off though is it?

madmik

robinph wrote: »

Not going to be connected to any network if the phone is switched off though is it?

even while switched off a phone can be tracked to a certain degree

its also possible for the network to ping the phone from their antennas

some features in a phone work even while its swiitched off such as the time ,clock,calender etc

miceal

Here is the information about it





Triangulation is a process by which the location of a radio transmitter can be determined by measuring either the radial distance, or the direction, of the received signal from two or three different points. Triangulation is sometimes used in cellular communications to pinpoint the geographic position of a user.
The drawings below illustrate the basic principle of triangulation. In the scenario shown by the top drawing, the distance to the cell phone is determined by measuring the relative time delays in the signal from the phone set to three different base stations. In the scenario shown by the bottom drawing, directional antennas at two base stations can be used to pinpoint the location of the cell phone.



Triangulation is difficult to carry out unless the person using the cell phone wants to be located. This might be the case, for example, in an emergency situation. Triangulation is the method by which the so-called 911 cell phones work.
Triangulation apparatus can be confused by the reflection of signals from objects such as large steel-frame buildings, water towers, communications towers, and other obstructions. For this reason, at least two independent triangulation determinations should be made to confirm the position of a cell phone or other radio transmitter.

robinph

madmik wrote: »

even while switched off a phone can be tracked to a certain degree

its also possible for the network to ping the phone from their antennas

some features in a phone work even while its swiitched off such as the time ,clock,calender etc

You sure about that, sounds like you've been watching a bit too much of Spooks/ Bond/ 24 or something similar. Huge difference between keeping the internal clock running and keeping the radio chips running with two way communication to cell towers.

seamus

It's very hit-and-miss. Afaik, it involves boosting the power to the mast. Of course, for that to work, you would need to know roughly where the phone is so you know which masts to focus on. This involves using the logs to trace where the phone was when it was switched off. It also has no hope of working if the battery or SIM has been removed from the phone. So it's a time-consuming process, and I don't think that the Gardai or the networks will take any of these steps unless it looks like the person won't be found by standard means or it's known that the person is in immediate danger. If it's an adult who's gone missing and who's not missing for more than 2 weeks, I very much doubt that this method would be used.

From what I remember, this is how they found Robert Holohan's body.

aphex™

02 had it up and running a few years ago. They traced me to 2 doors down the street. The idea was you'd text 'pub' to a number and they'd send you directions to your nearest pub and so on.

Nice service, but they dropped it completly one day.

Incidently, in the UK, all phone networks share location data. This was set up with the intelligence services a few years ago under the guise of a proper (legit) service, and as such there are several websites you can sign up to track your mobile with in the UK (not necessarily run by a mobile network). The main purpose of the thing was so that they could track terrorists on any network of course.

One or two of the websites messed up with the sign up proess and you used to be able to track any UK mobile with them for a while. :eek:

rebel.ranter

There is so much bad & mis-information in this thread I don't know where to start.

First things first, OP I hope you find who you are looking for, it is very worrying especially at this time of year.

A phone cannot be "tracked" when turned off.

Triangulation is not done, yes there was a few trials of triangulation systems in recent years by various networks. The motivation behind these trials were to promote location based services as mentioned in one of the posts.

Everytime you make a call basic info like the cell you initiated the call on is stored with the call detail. It does not track all the cells you are on.

If the phone is switched on & the Gardai know what to ask the network operator the phone could be "pinged", this would then force the phone to do a location update.

So what kind of accuracy can you expect?: That depends on the area the phone is in. In general the more urban an area is the easier it is to reduce the search area. This is due to the cell density in urban areas being greater, i.e. the cells are smaller & there are lots more of them than there would be in the country. Also the "timing advance" information can also help estimate how far for the base station that handset is. a timing advance of 4 will roughly indicate that the mobile is 2km from the base station.

Oh, finally, no "boosting" is done. Yer man from RITS security that shows up on RTE has a lot to answer for. I suppose its no harm to keep criminals on their toes.