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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

Although for what its worth, I wonder if it's possible for a cell to throw telcos off by broadcasting at higher power and connecting randomly between more and less distant antennas.

This is probably one of the dumber ideas I've come up with given that I have no idea how the different protocols for handshakes between cells and towers work. Looking to be educated on it here in the comments.

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Sounds like a great way to get your IMEI blacklisted by the carrier (and drop/miss calls a lot), and would not really stop them from triangulating your position (because you still have to be physically in range of all the towers, and would still be a determinable distance from them, being that distance is calculated using timing).

Cellular modem firmwares are also generally pretty closely guarded and not flashable.

The client handset's location is not determined by the power. It's determined by timing. Higher power would only give more basestations ability to receive your signal and add greater resolution to their position solution.

Add lag and randomize timing.

This isn't over the internet. This is a radio signal over the air.

First, your phone sends out a radio signal omnidirectionally. Then many basestations that know their own position and time very accurately receive it at slightly different times. They compare and use multi-lateration to determine where the broadcast had to come from.

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