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AT&T cellular IP reveals iPhone users' location?
- johannchiang 17y agoAs I understand, iPhones get NAT IP (10.x.x.x) in AT&T 3G networks, and outgoing IP shows the gateway location (at least some located in Los Angeles). From the article, the idea is interesting. But does it mean that it is possible for Stalqer to collect enough data to map AT&T NAT IP to 3G cell ID for location? I though AT&T would randomly assign NAT IP for users' privacy.
- pquerna 17y agoyou don't always get a NAT IP -- it seems to be a locality thing, depending on how and where they are bridging from the telephone network to the internet -- I've always seen a public IP in San Jose.
- dacort 17y agoI was under the impression it showed your gateway location as well. I started looking into it at one point and at least a simple whois lookup on the IP didn't reveal much information. Granted, it's easy enough to lookup wifi AP's, but one has to wonder how well this works. ... And if they've had a security evaluation done. ;)
- the_real_r2d2 17y agoIn the old times of WAP, mobile operators had gateways, so even though you could get the IP address of the phone (from a server-side for example) the information was meaningless to locate the user. With AT&T 3G I honestly do not know. May be someone could do some basic hacking and post some results.
- there 17y agoi have to say, using a pop3 account on the iphone to do background pushing of location information is pretty clever.
- the_real_r2d2 17y agoI wonder if the app is asking for permission to do it. If not, in my neighbourhood we call it "spyware". Seriously, it is a clever idea but I hope they are doing the right thing and asking the user for approval.
- elbac 17y agoThe accuracy of ip address geolocation in cellular networks is a waste of time. Best case you get a fix in the same state. If your on Wifi, that's another story, but again best case is metro area perhaps. This isn't really useful.