German Police Used 440K+ Stealth SMS to Track Suspects

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shamino

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There's nothing new here. Any phone, when connected to the network, can be tracked by the carrier. That's how cell phones work. When someone calls you, they don't broadcast the "ring" signal across the entire planet so see who picks up. The network knows what tower you're in range of and sends your data directly there.

These SMS messages don't give them any new abilities. Law enforcement could always get a warrant to go through a telco's log files and determine what towers you were connected to at any particular time. The use of these stealth SMS messages simply makes it a little easier, because the existing SMS framework already logs source and destinations of text messages, so they can use those logs and not have to perform a thorough analysis of low-level connection data logs.
 

dalethepcman

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Government Agent #1 : Quick find something to draw peoples attention away from CarrierIQ...

Government Agent #2 : I know, lets leak the tech we used 15 years ago to track people.

Governmetn Agent #1 : That's a great idea!
 
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