Tracking Tricks

As I mellow out on another weekday, sitting back and wondering where the week went so fast, I wondered....are we being watched? If a satellite can snap a picture of you from 100 miles up, then there has to be other ways that one can be tracked without his or her knowledge.

This got me wondering, as I kept fiddling with my cell phone for no reason what so ever, it hit me. Cell phones. Almost everyone has a cell phone. Could it be possible to track a person's movement through his cell phone? Absolutely.

A little bit of research led me to a term called repeater triangulation, normally used for 911 calls, this refers to the carrier utilizing technology and the cell phone towers around the area to "figure out" what the victim is. However, more companies are springing up to take advantage of this sort of technology. Apple does it and so does Google.
The concept is simple enough; send out a signal to at least 3 or more cellular towers and wait for a response. Depending on how long it takes to get a response and some other factors, the cell towers can give an approximate location of where you are at the very moment. Google Maps on your mobile device uses this to supplement an actual GPS device.

As handy as it may seem, it would not be hard for big brother to utilize the same technology to keep track of where one is going. Couple that with call logs and you can pretty much figure out where someone goes and what he/she does all day. So the question is, what do you do about it? In short, nothing. If you do not want it to happen, then turn off your phone...and see how long you can go without it functional. I can barely go half the day without it....