How to Track Any U.K. GSM Mobile Phone (Without the User's Consent)
by Jonathan Pamplin
As a result of improvements in mobile phone cell technology, U.K. mobile-phone companies have for the past two years been able to sell transmitter data to online mobile phone location services that enable them to triangulate to within 100 yards the location of a given mobile GSM phone.
This technology was in the news recently when the police tracked one of the London Bombers across Europe to his brother's house in Italy where he was arrested.
To be able to track a mobile phone and comply with the Data Protection Laws, mobile location services have to prove that the phone owner has given their consent to be tracked. They do this by sending an SMS to the phone's telephone number requesting a reply to the effect that you agree for the phone to be tracked. The majority of the phone location services only do this once to register the phone and then it can be tracked at any time without further SMS alerts to the phone.
This is all very well if you have access to the mobile phone to reply to the SMS agreeing to be tracked but that's no use if the phone is in the hands of someone else. Anyway it's not much fun tracking your own phone.
What I am about to describe is a way around this system that will allow you to track any U.K. GSM phone without the owner's consent on the following U.K. networks: T-Mobile, Orange, O2, and Vodafone.
To begin with you need to set up an account with one of the mobile phone location services. I have chosen for this article www.fleetonline.net simply because it offers a pay as you go service and does not charge you extra to add different phones as many of the others companies do.
I would suggest as a username you use something silly like sexygirls4u, or, time2buyanewphone as the target phone will receive an SMS with your username in the beginning and if it's daft they will just assume it's just another junk SMS. You will also need to credit the account with 10 British pounds.
Now set up an account with one of the many fake SMS sites I've used (www.sharpmail.co.uk is one) to enable you to send SMS messages from a fake number.
Now you're ready to register your target's mobile phone with FleetOnline. Login to your FleetOnline account, go to admin, and add a new member. Enter any name and the mobile phone number you want to track.
The recipient will get a message like this. You can see the message in the sent messages folder within FleetOnline.
BuyANewPhone 07354654323345 wants to locate your mobile from now on using FleetOnline. Text 'T2Y' to 00447950081259 to agree.
The important thing here is the reply telephone number 00447950081259 and the text T2Y.
The reply number is always the same but occasionally the text changes to T2YXDT. You can tell if this is the case as you will see ****** instead of T2Y in the sent messages folder of FleetOnline.
Now go to your SharpMail account and send a fake SMS from the phone number you want to track to 00447950081259 with the text T2Y.
Within a few minutes your FleetOnline account will have registered that phone number and you will be able to track it to within 100 yards superimposed onto a detailed street map using FleetOnline, all without the mobile phone user's consent.
If you have problems with the T2Y or T2YXDT just attempt to register a random telephone number first. Then register the one you want to track and the reply code should always be T2Y.
There is no charge for adding new numbers using FleetOnline so feel free to experiment.
This will work with many of the other mobile phone location services and fake SMS services. Just use Google to find an alternative if these let you down.
If you're concerned about being tracked using this method, use a Virgin SIM card as this is the only U.K. network not to provide tracking information to the mobile location services at present.
Although the current 3G services don't do it either, the fact that their handsets contain GPS suggests that they will be doing it soon!
Shouts to Nemma, Lynxtec, ServiceTec, and 4Mat.