03 January 2009

Will Tin Foil Defeat GPS Tracking?

I get this question a lot on several of my GPS-related blogs:

www.satviz.com
www.gpsbus.com
www.snoop411.com

The answer is, if you can find the antenna for the GPS tracking unit, most likely tin foil will stop your boss from seeing where you are ... or where you aren't.

Of course s/he will also know exactly where and when the tin foil was put in place and where and when it was taken off, so you might want to do alittle planning on that idea before you implement it.

Now if you are being tracked via a GPS-enabled phone, the tin foil will be a bit harder to keep in place .. and also you might consider this: It is likely if you are being tracked via a phone company provided service that the phone company is also tracking your phone's approximate posiiton via the cell sites you connect to. Some of these systems are very sophisticated, able tio locate the phone down to a few meters ... EVEN IF IT DOESN'T HAVE GPS

Yes, you read that correctly. All phone companies have to supply telephone posiitons to emergency services during 911 calls ... it's Federal Law. This means they have to be able to locate non-GPS as well as GPS phones. It's a done deal.

If the phone company elects to provide that service to othe parties ... such as your emplyer ... for a fee of course ... it is likely you have any chopice in the matter, So, before you raid the kitchen cabinet for tin foil, you might instead want to consider:

The best way to avoid being tracked is to turn the phone off. You might get fired, but at least they wont know where you've been.