In this news article today, it says: "Law enforcement officials told ABC News that authorities tracked Barnes' car because he had GPS installed in it."
My guess is Onstar, or a similiar type technology. Yes, your average run of the mill GPS is one way, however there are two way solutions out there that sync to the cloud.
For example, Metromile offers a free OBD GPS. Plug it in to your OBD port on your car, and it automatically (via 3G cellular) updates your cars location to the cloud, including mileage and other things.
My guess is that there's several ways to do it and that the method used is deliberately kept vague. All I know is that is my location is being recorde d during the day simply because I have a cell phone that automatically upda tes itself. Cell phone technology and GPS are great tools for law enforceme nt and other agencies.
I believe the units do send a signal that is used to help find where you are. But to track YOUR unit, they would have to know the make, model, and serial number of the unit, then be in constant contact with the provider. And the unit would have to be turned on and functioing.
If the unit was installed by the car maker, then that's no big deal.
All they would need is the VIN. But I highly doubt that actually happened the way the claim.
It ain't like the HOllyvooe version of NCIS where they're showing tracking someone's cellphone or car by gps.I think it's just a ploy to make the bad guys think it can be done that way.
Are you talking about a run of the mill GPS? No, it does NOT send a signal.
And what provider would that be?
So, in your expert opinion, what did happen?
You do realize it is possible to track a cell phone, right?
True satellite GPS is from sat to rcvr only. The article was written by reporters based on info given by police. The first one does not have a clue about anything the least bit technical and the other won't tell.
+1
I was going to say much the same, but I read your post first.
How do you suppose the satellite knows where the car is?
I think the FCC would be really upset about that. There's all these Garmin and Tom Tom supposed transmitters that are not registered as transmitters, only receivers.
Correct, but a lot of people seem to be confused between the "GPS" part and the part that phones home in such gadgets as tracking devices for commercial trucks, tracking devices that track your car, including when your teenager is driving, On*Star, and some anti-theft gadgets for cars like LoJack. They have GPS, and then they have some radio to "phone home", either in real time or with periodic reports.
If it's a cell phone, or contains one, it may be possible for someone to remotely provoke a cell phone to send its GPS coordinates. This is part of the law to support 911. There are several ways you can make the position available (another is triangulating by cell towers) and the manufacturer gets to choose.
On*Star, for one, although it probably ends up being done by wireless phone companies. Google "track your car" and there's lots of tracking gadgets. No, they are not vanilla GPS units. The manufacturer must either have, or have a deal with, something that receives radio signals and ultimately makes the car position available on some web site. Some may use cell phones, but it would seem that those up-to-the-minute trackers use up too many minutes to make cell phones profitable.
Yes, and a number of "GPS trackers" are trackable because they contain the equivalent of a cell phone, perhaps minus a screen, speaker, microphone, and keyboard. Some "GPS trackers" aren't trackable until the car comes back and you download the information about where it's been.
Gordon Burditt wrote, on Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:32:24 -0600:
Apparently, from the news reports, the car dealer installed the hidden gps tracking device.
The TV news is reporting that the suspect had bad credit and the dealer installed the tracker to allow them to repossess car if necessary. No idea if the suspect agreed to this as part of the loan.
Also see
Many car manufacturer install systems that will report the location of any automobile through cellular telephone networks.
The satellite could care less. The location is determined by pinpointing the direction of at least 3 signals.
Leave it up to poor journalism to get the infromation wrong. Since the dealer had installed a tracking device, then I can understand how they were able to track him. It doesn't maater if the car had a satnav system or not.
AMuzi wrote, on Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:01:39 -0600:
Is that legal?
You should probably read up on how GPS works.
Your GPS receiver doesn't have a directional antenna.
I figure you, being the electronics and radio expert would know that.
That's easy. It doesn't.
A GPS *receiver* does a lot of math on the signals it receives from the satellites to figure out where it is. But it is only the receiver that knows where it is. It does not send a signal to any GPS satellites. Period.
It doesn?t.
It wouldn?t been hidden, just an option.
I'm wrong. Assuming you mean that the satellite couldn't care less, you're right. A device that simply reports your position to you in the car simply reads the signals and performs some calculations.
The location is actually determined by figuring the intersection of three spheres, each of which has radius from a satellite to the car. A tracking device, which is what must have been installed in the car in question, would then relay the computed position to some wireless network.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.