phone, gps, location finder

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stasik
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phone, gps, location finder

Post by stasik » Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:46 am

this is nothing important, i am just curious myself:
my phone has ovi maps and obviously gps antenna inside. i can display my location on map based on:
1. gps signal - getting coordinate from gps satellites and plotting them on map. free service, but u need to be outdor to get signal
2. wap - phone network provider can see to what antenna u are currently connected and can give u an approximate location. it cost as data transfer is used
3. wifi. so here i am, in the basement, all setting disabled (anyway there is no gps or network connection fere) i have only wifi enabled and still it finds my location, not very accurate and it moves from side to side, but still work. any ideas how???
when i ll have time, i ll check the traffic and see what is sent/received. maybe last known network antenna? when i check the location of net ip it display it wrong, so the idea of displaying the ip location is excluded

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SkriptAsylum
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Re: phone, gps, location finder

Post by SkriptAsylum » Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:05 pm

Dependent on what phone you have and how you're checking GPS location, it could be simply based off Geo-Location of your router. Google was caught recording SSID's and MAC addresses of open wifi hotspots for Geo-Location when GPS is not available, for example. Not to mention some phones 'disable' GPS but leave the service running in background.
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Thor
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Re: phone, gps, location finder

Post by Thor » Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:02 am

Exactly, one thing I was trying to explain to somebody awhile back was that when Google was doing their drive-by's, what they meant by GPS was the GPS locations of the routers they found; relative to their tracking equipment on the car.

But though, im not sure I fully understand you. If your phone has active phone service, then that would likely be it, whether your GPS apps and the like are active or not. Location services.
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stasik
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Re: phone, gps, location finder

Post by stasik » Wed Aug 31, 2011 9:01 am

when i check the location vial laptop connected via the same router, i get it wrong, wia phone i get 95% accurate location, based only on wifi connection to my phone. mac address of the router has been change, but that does not affect the result. i ll analyze the traffic to understand how its working. home its not encrypted

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Cool_Fire
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Re: phone, gps, location finder

Post by Cool_Fire » Wed Aug 31, 2011 3:02 pm

There's also location services that work based on cell tower triangulation. Just by tower signal strength, but it's pretty inaccurate.
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stasik
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Re: phone, gps, location finder

Post by stasik » Mon Sep 12, 2011 8:27 am

this is when u have service. i had no service at all..

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Re: phone, gps, location finder

Post by Cool_Fire » Mon Sep 12, 2011 5:11 pm

It might pull some data from a IP location database? Or maybe there's some wifi network name location database too?
You'll have to mess around with these variables to see if they have any effect.
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