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A comment on US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data. Parent comment

Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by ballenf on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @12:14PM (#17083553)
Tested and same result.

I have a strong suspicion that it intentionally places you some distance from where it knows you actually are. Unless there is some underlying reason why it would never be 100% accurate -- I've seen dozens of people post their results and every time it's 1-300 meters off.

And it's not just "no one tests while under the cell tower" because the location it gave me was 150 meters in the opposite direction of the cell tower that I can see out my window. And the location it gave was smack in the middle of a neighborhood I know well and know to be free of cell towers. Or I'm just paranoid.

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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by mastofaces on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @12:44PM (#17083888)
I just used the internet site it said up to 14 miles off in accuracy on the results page. It was actually 4 miles off with my wifi off and GPS off and ZLAT off. I'm also pretty sure the location it picked is very close to an existing cell tower.
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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by forapurpose on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @02:58PM (#17085369)
What is ZLAT?
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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by SahAssar on Wednesday May 16, 2018 @06:22PM (#17086959)
I'm guessing s/he meant IZat: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/izat
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Re:US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone lo... by Distribution on Thursday May 17, 2018 @01:41PM (#17093519)
Did you have WiFi on? Several companies have basically mapped (wardriving) nearly every wifi spot in the US and have correlated that with GPS. The vast majority of these wifi spots never, or rarely, move. By using several known wifi locations and their given latency, you can accurately predict location without cellular or GPS, like, down to the tens of meters.
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