That just seems outrageous to me. As many true crime stories I've watched on TV, suspects are often pinpointed from cell phone data. And yet people can call SWAT and there's no record of the phone calls?
There are some protections you can use to keep your identity secret, but most of them end up just relying on not being worth the time and effort to them.
You can get a VPN in a country that doesn't have any notable handshake with the U.S. government, for example, but a lot of shitty VPNs will retain logs even if they say they won't.
Anything that pings off of a cell tower should be locatable to at least some margin as well. I notice my cell phone logins often say my accurate location, even without location tracking on, whereas on a desktop it can assume I am +/-30 miles away.
TL;DR: There is no way most of these SWATers that never get caught are all taking every single possible precaution, there should be more SWATers found before they do it a second time.
Yes they can find the phone (unsure if they can trace a throw away phone though), if the police can't there are other agencies that can help them, like the US Marshals for one and any other agency that has the equipment to and/or can get some info from the phone companies.
Beyond that, they can triangulate using both WiFi and cellular towers.
Removal of battery would in theory prevent this, except AFAIK (very exhausted right now so grain of salt without more extensive research) even cheap phones have ways to track location data from a secondary low power source.
Have you ever turned your phone off, talked about something and later that day you got served ads relevant to a conversation you had while your phone was off?
Can't find swatters either
That just seems outrageous to me. As many true crime stories I've watched on TV, suspects are often pinpointed from cell phone data. And yet people can call SWAT and there's no record of the phone calls?
if 4chan can find a random flag in the middle of nowhere, they can find pipe bombers etc
Right? I think the new cast of Fish Tank was in the house all of one day before half chan figured out all their secrets.
There are some protections you can use to keep your identity secret, but most of them end up just relying on not being worth the time and effort to them.
You can get a VPN in a country that doesn't have any notable handshake with the U.S. government, for example, but a lot of shitty VPNs will retain logs even if they say they won't.
Anything that pings off of a cell tower should be locatable to at least some margin as well. I notice my cell phone logins often say my accurate location, even without location tracking on, whereas on a desktop it can assume I am +/-30 miles away.
TL;DR: There is no way most of these SWATers that never get caught are all taking every single possible precaution, there should be more SWATers found before they do it a second time.
They're likely in on it, if not "it" itself.
Weird how that works, huh?
Right? So the police do not have a way to find out who the caller is?
Yes they can find the phone (unsure if they can trace a throw away phone though), if the police can't there are other agencies that can help them, like the US Marshals for one and any other agency that has the equipment to and/or can get some info from the phone companies.
Thanks. That's what I thought.
I am fairly certain today's burners at a minimum are traceable. Take the Nokia 2760 for example: a cheap prepayable phone ($20), and it has an SoC that has GPS (https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_us/nokia-2760-flip/specs?sku=GPNKN139DCGBB).
Beyond that, they can triangulate using both WiFi and cellular towers.
Removal of battery would in theory prevent this, except AFAIK (very exhausted right now so grain of salt without more extensive research) even cheap phones have ways to track location data from a secondary low power source.
Have you ever turned your phone off, talked about something and later that day you got served ads relevant to a conversation you had while your phone was off?
Only pays off w maga memaws walking thru opendoors