TH's cell phone pings

New Posts

I have print made a print screen of the map area but have no idea how to post it here...any suggestions?
 
Me too debs...my point in posting is that the site I got this from said the cell towers were so few and far between, her phone could have pinged from the school itself
 
Cellular Triangulation​

15069_3.gif

When someone is missing, even this small bit of information can prove useful in determining the approximate location of a device using the updates from the mobile switching center. If the mobile subscriber is still within cell phone range, authorities can track his or her general movement by following the sequence of towers the phone has contacted or pinged. And if the cell phone goes out of range or runs out of battery power, the mobile operator may be able to use the last recorded location before the cell phone either lost its signal or lost power.​

But the most useful information for locating people when they are lost comes when someone has initiated or received a call or text message on their phone. Mobile operators keep records of these events for billing purposes in what is known as a call data record, or CDR. And they can go back to these records to get a historical account of the cell phone’s location.​

 
I just think it's wrong to speculate it was TERRI'S phone, in general. We have no information to that end.
 
Yabba said:
I have print made a print screen of the map area but have no idea how to post it here...any suggestions?
Click to expand...

You would upload it to an image-hosting site like Photobucket or Tinypic, then copy and paste the
 
RubyRed said:
WW has learned that federal, county and city law-enforcement officials say the reason for the search of Sauvie Island is that cell-phone records reveal Kyron’s step-mother, Terri Moulton Horman, may have been on the island the day he disappeared.

http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2010/06...yron-horman-focuses-on-step-mom-cell-records/
Click to expand...


That is not enough for me to say that LE in fact identified Terri's phone as pinging there. It could be the 'local gossip' we've seen before, as much as I think the smoke/fire idiom holds true most of the time. I have not, however, seen a retraction of this statement by WW or any walking back of anything by LE, either.
 
debs said:
That is not enough for me to say that LE in fact identified Terri's phone as pinging there. It could be the 'local gossip' we've seen before, as much as I think the smoke/fire idiom holds true most of the time. I have not, however, seen a retraction of this statement by WW or any walking back of anything by LE, either.
Click to expand...

See Post #10 on this thread, People Magazine decided to go with it...not sure if or how they confirm their stories nor the others. Hard to say what is true or not unless it comes directly from LE. LE I don't think will confirm it at all. Personally in regards to the pings, SM & SI, I tend to believe it is true.
 
SmilingSweetly said:
I just wanted to add that perhaps she has an iPhone, like me. You cannot remove the battery and it has GPS. I also have a program that I can use if my phone is lost that shows me the vicinity that it is in by using GPS. The GPS on my phone is activated anytime I use Google Maps or another program that requires the "Location" feature. It asks you first (if you want to use the "Location" feature), but there is a setting where you can leave it on. I am sure AT&T is able to pull all of that information.

Information on the GPS, etc. is located here: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/42722
Click to expand...

A lot of current "smart phones" have GPS enabled on them already. You might not know about it, like I have it on my BB (a 2007 model.) It's there, but you have to purchase the application to access it yourself.

In my case, I downloaded Google Maps which enabled that "feature" on my phone.

Also, phones are pinged from their carriers towers; i.e. ATT phones would ping from an ATT tower. HOWEVER, carriers like Boost mobile buy the extra tower space (bandwidth) from all towers in the area.

Or at least, this is what I have been told from many people.
 
Blackberry Phones have GPS and yes they can be tracked. In fact most of your newer phones do. If you take your sim card out and put it in a PDA phone the service provider can tell what phone you are using by the sim card. Your other phones have the chip in the phone itself. Now when people go to buy prepaid phones they will have to be registered soon. To many people use them for things they should not like EX. Drug Sales etc.
 
Someone asked a good question here. If you can't get service out on a cell phone, is it still able to ping a tower?

Does anyone know that answer. (Really has nothing to do with this case, I'm just curious as there are MANY places here in So. Oregon where I can't get out, including my own home sometimes. Lot's of canyons and mountains. ) It would be interesting to know in the event someone was lost.

I am guessing the answer is No, because of what happened to that poor family that was lost in the mountains down here a couple years ago, where he went looking for help and died. I'm sorry, but I can't remember their names. They were from SF.
 
debs said:
That is not enough for me to say that LE in fact identified Terri's phone as pinging there. It could be the 'local gossip' we've seen before, as much as I think the smoke/fire idiom holds true most of the time. I have not, however, seen a retraction of this statement by WW or any walking back of anything by LE, either.
Click to expand...

LE has not said Terri's phone pinged on SI. unless that happens, i call it a rumor.
 
Couldn't it be possible that a calculating fan of CSI might dispose of a body
close to home and then drive to another location (the island) allowing cell
phone pings to mislead LE?

I don't even own a cell phone, but I do watch CSI.
 
Just a thought to give another perspective on the cell phone "ping" topic. I live in a border city with a waterway between two COUNTRIES. I have often over the years had to call my cell phone provider to have roaming charges removed simply because my phone "pinged" towers in the border country and was considered as "roaming" when in fact I never left the US. If the towers are within a few miles of each other I dont believe that this can be considered conclusive proof of anything...only another avenue to explore.
 
GrainneDhu said:
I'm not being disrespectful here, but I've known about cell phone pings ever since I got my first cell phone back in the late 80s. When someone calls into your cell phone, the system has to have a way to know which tower to route that call through. Otherwise, they'd have to broadcast every single call through every single tower in the US. Not feasible.

Frankly, I am surprised that anyone is surprised about cell phone pings. What do you think runs the battery down even if you make no calls at all? If you turn your cell phone all the way off or yank the battery, then call your cell phone number, the system either instantly or almost instantly routes your call either to voicemail or to an automated message saying something like "that phone is not reachable right now."

I'm honestly not trying to be disrespectful, I'm just surprised that there is any adult who doesn't know how cell phones work. I'm one of the least tech savvy people there is and I know! I tend to assume that if I know something tech-ish, everyone knows it.
Click to expand...


IIRC from learning about pings in Drew Peterson case, when you have your phone it is constantly searching for the nearest cell phone tower. Thus emits pings, IIRC.

Are ping records accessible to anyone, or just to LE when they get a subpeona or something? For example if I wanted to see where my phone was pinging (for some reason) on a certain date, could I request ping records from my cell company? Just curious....

abbie
 
sherbetjello said:
Also, phones are pinged from their carriers towers; i.e. ATT phones would ping from an ATT tower. HOWEVER, carriers like Boost mobile buy the extra tower space (bandwidth) from all towers in the area.

Or at least, this is what I have been told from many people.
Click to expand...

What we're finding in the Steven Koecher case, is that cellphones CAN hit other companies' towers - even in a city like Las Vegas.

We know the "tower names" of the towers that his cellphone hit, BUT when we search AT&T's lists - not all of the tower names appear there.

There's many generic towers owned by companies that share bandwidth, so it would take knowledge of all of those companies' tower names, to adequate trace things -- and we don't even know if the phone signal didn't just bounce around the LV valley (as some techies have told us).
 
Yabba said:
New here so forgive me if this has been posted already

Cell phone towers in Portland

http://www.cellreception.com/towers/towers.php?city=portland&state_abr=or
Click to expand...

We've used that and similar sites in the Koecher case, and like it says on that page, not all towers are shown because not all are registered.

"The FCC does not require every antenna structure to be registered, and the map may or may not list all the towers in the area. Additionally, many carriers have sold their tower assets to third party companies, and leasing agreements are unknown. If this is the case, the best way to determine carrier coverage is by reading comments in the local area."
 
Billylee said:
Someone asked a good question here. If you can't get service out on a cell phone, is it still able to ping a tower?

Does anyone know that answer. (Really has nothing to do with this case, I'm just curious as there are MANY places here in So. Oregon where I can't get out, including my own home sometimes. Lot's of canyons and mountains. ) It would be interesting to know in the event someone was lost.

I am guessing the answer is No, because of what happened to that poor family that was lost in the mountains down here a couple years ago, where he went looking for help and died. I'm sorry, but I can't remember their names. They were from SF.
Click to expand...

The Kim family, this article tells how a cell ping briefly connected to a tower, even though they had no cell service.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/06/national/main2232874.shtml
 
Anyone know what the cell phone carrier was that TH had? I can tell you in a heartbeat distance and towers that could be hit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Members online

... and 193 more.
Total: 4,541 (members: 194, guests: 4,347)

Online statistics

Members online
194
Guests online
4,347
Total visitors
4,541
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
592,424
Messages
17,968,606
Members
228,765
Latest member
Mona Lisa
Back
Top