Disabling contactless payment on credit/debit cards

Paul_1977

Mobile phones can function as long as the phone company knows which tower you are connected to, the and phone tells them this when it searches, detects and contacts to a tower. It does not need GPS tracking data.

So the company will know roughly which area you are in and can judging by the signal strength roughly be able to tell how far you are from the tower, but its not an exact location, and in a big city, it would not be easy to find someone.

In other words, if you turn off 3g/4g services, it will revert to 2g and no location data will be sent to the company. Not a tracking device. Also wireless needs to be turned off obviously.

csteinle

Paul_1977 wrote: »

Mobile phones can function as long as the phone company knows which tower you are connected to, the and phone tells them this when it searches, detects and contacts to a tower. It does not need GPS tracking data.

So the company will know roughly which area you are in and can judging by the signal strength roughly be able to tell how far you are from the tower, but its not an exact location, and in a big city, it would not be easy to find someone.

In other words, if you turn off 3g/4g services, it will revert to 2g and no location data will be sent to the company.

That's really not how it works. At all.

Your phone constantly takes power readings of the signal it sees from every available tower in range. It sends those back to the network, which then uses them to decide which tower the phone should speak to. This allows a phone to use a weaker signal from a less congested tower. It's the network that makes this decision, not the phone. It also means your position can be triangulated very accurately, particularly in cell-dense areas. Look up the US E911 spec.

Paul_1977

So its the other way around.

That aside.

I doubt they could track you within arm distance, say you call from a office block on the tenth floor? Sure they know you are near/on a certain street.

Or a cafa, or a street with many people on. Unless you stand out from the crowd, with an old 2g phone without GPS it would be very difficult.

csteinle

Paul_1977 wrote: »

So its the other way around.

That aside.

I doubt they could track you within arm distance, say you call from a office block on the tenth floor? Sure they know you are near/on a certain street.

Or a cafa, or a street with many people on. Unless you stand out from the crowd, with an old 2g phone without GPS it would be very difficult.

E911 spec required a minimum accuracy of under 10m in urban areas and 100m in rural. But the data allows even more accurate triangulation in cell-dense areas. GPS is never actually sent to the network anyway, although it is sent to google/apple depending on what you're doing. Plus wifi location can be quite precise. By which I mean the phone speaks to a location service with signal strengths to all the wifi access points it sees and gets back a location.

eDicky

Paul_1977 wrote: »

In other words, if you turn off 3g/4g services, it will revert to 2g and no location data will be sent to the company. Not a tracking device. Also wireless needs to be turned off obviously.

I seem to remember, in the days long before 3G and GPS on phones, bank robbers being convicted on evidence of the triangulation data from the mobile phone in their pocket locating them at the bank.

Anthorn

eDicky wrote: »

I seem to remember, in the days long before 3G and GPS on phones, bank robbers being convicted on evidence of the triangulation data from the mobile phone in their pocket locating them at the bank.

Agreed. Even some older films refer to mobile phone users being tracked. In addition, rather a lot of apps and OSs allow the choice of location by GPS or WiFi which means that it's not only mobile data that is subject to tracking. As underlining the point, my FreeSat box also allows for location tracking as does catch-up such as ITV Player tv on FreeView.

hasdogs

Paul_1977 wrote: »

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Disable-Contactless-Payment-on-Your-Debit-C/

This nick with a craft knife is all that was required to disable contactless on an ASDA Money card.