Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

[ghost-angel]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

Yes...but only one is Bluetooth compatible!

 

JoeG

I had no idea Takofanes had Bluetooth......

[Ternaugh]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

I had no idea Takofanes had Bluetooth......

He captured the Danish king some time ago...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_I_of_Denmark

 

JoeG

[Steve Long]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

I had no idea Takofanes had Bluetooth......

 

No, you're thinking of Bonetooth, the wireless connection to the Land of the Dead. He invented it, I think.

[Lucius]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

No' date=' you're thinking of [i']Bone[/i]tooth, the wireless connection to the Land of the Dead. He invented it, I think.

 

So, since Systems Operations lets me operate certain kinds of security systems - like, say, by monitoring a network of audio-visual pickups covering a facility, choosing and zooming in with a given camera, even locking and unlocking doors remotely.....

 

Would there be a magical version of the same skill, perhaps even a Necromantic Systoms Operations that lets me see and hear through specially prepared skulls left in niches, or even using the senses of mobile undead in the facility?

 

Is there a necromantic counterpart to Computer Programming, that could allow re-programming of undead automata as Computer Programming can allow re-programming of robotic automata?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary has gone fission

[CBikle]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

No' date=' you're thinking of [i']Bone[/i]tooth, the wireless connection to the Land of the Dead. He invented it, I think.

 

 

Because you said that, I think it just became official CU canon.

[Lucius]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

Both are soul sucking evils bent on dominating the world....

 

Wouldn't that be true of corporations in general?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary adds, not to mention political parties.

[Koshka]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

Sorry to be late, I've had a ton of overtime lately.

 

I ain't talking theoretical, I SEEN it. A cell transmits a signal, repeatedly but not constant, that it can be found with.

 

It's gotta be more complex than that. I think it was last winter when a couple drove out in a snowstorm to get some meth, took it before driving home, got stuck, left the car, and wandered around the countryside describing hallucinations to the 911 operator until they passed out and froze to death. If it was easy to get the location of a cell phone, they'd still be alive -- IIRC they were on the phone for at least 20 minutes, one continual call. It might depend on just where you are.

 

It's been a couple years since I got my TracFone. I did have to register it before plugging time into it, and they ask for a regular phone number (not your TracFone number) and if you're registering online your e-mail. However, if the team is junking the phones as they run out of initial minutes, they could easily lie on the registration form. TracFone makes automated reminder calls when I need to stick some more minutes onto the phone, and I get regular e-mails with special offers -- but type in a random phone number and a made-up e-mail and the phone will probably be in the recycle bin at the battered womens' shelter before anything is sent out that would reveal the lie.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

Sorry to be late, I've had a ton of overtime lately.

 

 

 

It's gotta be more complex than that. I think it was last winter when a couple drove out in a snowstorm to get some meth, took it before driving home, got stuck, left the car, and wandered around the countryside describing hallucinations to the 911 operator until they passed out and froze to death. If it was easy to get the location of a cell phone, they'd still be alive -- IIRC they were on the phone for at least 20 minutes, one continual call. It might depend on just where you are.

Several issues there

1) they were a moving target, makes it harder but not impossible.

2) they may have called a 911 Dispatch station not yet equipped to triangulate a Cellular signal

3) just because you can find someone doesn't mean you can get Emergency there on time. They were in the country in a snowstorm, probably off a road of any kind meaning the Police/Ambulance just may never be able to find them... doubly so if they keep on walking around in a largeish area.

4) Emergency isn't equipped to track at all (no handy little tracking device telling you how close you are). Most directions involve things like "Corner of fifth and tremont" not "Longitude X, Latitude Y - out in the country somewhere."

[Basil]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

Cell Phones, and most Pagers, ping the towers every so often (1-5 minutes typically) to let the network know their position

 

The only way to stop triangulation of a cell phone (active call or not) is to turn it off. You don't have to remove the battery, but that's one of way of getting it to stop transmitting. End result is it has to be powerless.

 

This is self-contradictory. If the phone is "pinging" every few minutes, it can be tracked and located. It may be difficult to triangulate, in the literal sense, but since it is announcing its location, it can be located. It may take cracking into the telco's cellphone-tracking system, it may be possible to "find" the signal, but it can be done.

 

Anyone interested in cellphones and security is encouraged to get (preferably from the library) How To Be Invisible by J. J. Luna. He's paid thousands of dollars to lecture on personal privacy and security subjects, and has access to a number of experts on various fields. His recommendation is simple: pull the battery from your cellphone, and get the simplest, cheapest pager you can find. When you're paged by someone you're willing to talk to, stick the battery back in the cellphone.

 

As he points out, an even better method is a pager and a lot of loose change for the payphone.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

How was my statement self contradictory? If it's on it's broadcasting it's location. If it's off it's not.

[Lemurion]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

When a cellphone makes a call, it has to transmit the dialed digits to the tower so the call can be routed correctly. This means that the telco's billing system knows exactly what number was dialed. I've resolved any number of billing issues due to being able to see what specific numbers someone dialed.

 

For any outgoing call, the telco (using GSM devices as an example) keeps a record of the device's IMEI, the ICCID of the SIM card in the device, the number called, the dialed digits, and the location of the tower the device was registered on.

 

Now, since number portability has come in, the dialed digits may not map to the called number because all carriers now rely on routing numbers to connect calls, which may or may not be the same as the phone number (it won't be if you previously had that number with another service), and while they try to put the actual number called into the records sometimes it's the routing number that gets recorded instead.

 

For incoming calls, the dialed digits are obviously missing, and it is harder to determine whether the calling number was a routing number or dialable number.

[Marcus Impudite]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

Takofanes' influence would certainly explain some wireless network policies....

 

Although it might be amusing to see those Poser Mobile guys from the T Mobile To Go commercials run afoul of ol' Takofanes.

[Threnody]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

ghost angel: Are you trying to claim that hitting the "off" switch on a cellphone disconnects the battery from the "ping every 5 minutes" circuit?

 

Cause less it does, a cellphone with its battery in can be found. Crack the telco's system or serve a supeena (spelling?), and you have it. No need for no triangulating.

 

All your talk bout "can't triangulate" is a smoke screen. That ain't what nobody's saying. We're saying a cellphone with its battery in can be found. There's more than one way to find, ya know.

[Lemurion]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

ghost angel: Are you trying to claim that hitting the "off" switch on a cellphone disconnects the battery from the "ping every 5 minutes" circuit?

 

Cause less it does, a cellphone with its battery in can be found. Crack the telco's system or serve a supeena (spelling?), and you have it. No need for no triangulating.

 

All your talk bout "can't triangulate" is a smoke screen. That ain't what nobody's saying. We're saying a cellphone with its battery in can be found. There's more than one way to find, ya know.

 

I'm going to answer this one if you don't mind, as my daily job specifically involves dealing with cellphone troubleshooting including location-based registration issues.

 

Once a cellphone is turned off, it stops transmitting, period. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which are FAA regulations for taking a cellphone on an airline. Whether the battery is in or not, it then becomes impossible to track its current location. The one thing you can track is the location of the switch the phone was last registered on. However, this is not as helpful as it may appear, as sometimes a device can get stuck on a switch, and so it will lose service because it may have moved two or three hundred miles, and if the tower did not hand-off properly it's still showing that the phone hasn't moved. Most switches hold the phone's registry for a period from minutes to hours, after which the switch dumps it. However the telco's system will still show that last switch it registered on.

 

There are various ways to track a cell while it's transmitting, however most of those do not involve contacting the telco. Recent regulations now require that they be able to fix the phone's location (while it's on) within a certain radius, but that's not something the phone is normally doing all the time. The telcos aren't keeping records of the location of the phones, and the customer-facing departments don't have access to the systems.

 

It can be done, but it's not something so easy that we should all leave the batteries out of our cellphones so we don't get tracked.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Prepaid Wireless (aka Tracfones)

 

ghost angel: Are you trying to claim that hitting the "off" switch on a cellphone disconnects the battery from the "ping every 5 minutes" circuit?

 

Cause less it does, a cellphone with its battery in can be found. Crack the telco's system or serve a supeena (spelling?), and you have it. No need for no triangulating.

 

All your talk bout "can't triangulate" is a smoke screen. That ain't what nobody's saying. We're saying a cellphone with its battery in can be found. There's more than one way to find, ya know.

(sp: subpena, subpoena)

 

What Lemurian said; he deals more with cellular technology than I do, but I still deal with Telephony all day.

 

If it's OFF it is OFF. You can't actively track a cellphone that is not transmitting or receiving. Device OFF = Device not transmitting/receiving = NO TRACKING, NO FINDING.

 

Walk around all day - no one's going to find a cell phone that isn't on. period.

 

like lemurian has pointed out, a Tower may keep the record for a while, but you need to get into the Tower records, which usually means someone in the nearest C/O. It's not something your average Telco Rep has access to. So sure, you can find last known location, but that probably won't help you very much.

 

In fact, almost all DNIS and record tracing is done after the face, not live.