Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
How to Find a GPS Tracker in Your Car: Update
November 14, 2012
Sometimes I get my topics from odd places. Today's headline actually comes from a search someone did on the Ride the Lightning website to find an earlier post. Since then, I've learned more.
We've had some funny stories of idiots who, having been told that the tracker needed a clear line of sight, simply stuck the tracker on the car roof. They should all be this simple to find. And then there was the lady who was genuinely being stalked by her husband, but it took several hours for dumbfounded mechanics to find it, which they finally did by removing the dashboard where they found it connected to the car battery. Much smarter – no need to recharge.
Wired published a guide to finding the devices last year. We don't see many of the older, cheaper passive trackers anymore. These store data but don't transmit it – someone has to retrieve the data from the device. Those devices seem like antiques now.
What folks really want is realtime data, the active devices that transmit your location. Behind the dash seems to be the most common place to stash them but have someone who knows cars do a thorough investigation to find them. Most of the time, the person who planted the device will prefer to wire it into the car's electrical system so there is no need to recharge it. There are (natch) GPS detectors on the market as well. BrickHouse Security sells both the trackers and the tracker detectors. Gotta love the capitalist system.
And there are deep cover devices which rely more on cell tower triangulation than GPS signals. For those, you may need a mechanic to strip down the vehicle.
We've even heard of GPS trackers sewn into a child's jacket to help track the other parent. It's a crazy world.
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