Geotracking isn't accurate...

submitted by BravoVictor from (i.imgur.com)

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[–]BravoVictor[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm not familiar with the exact tech they used. You're right about cell tower signal strength throwing off accuracy. However, I know most cell phones use both cell tower triangulation and GPS to estimate location, since there's a neat math trick you can use with Gaussian distributions where you can take two low quality signals and merge them into a higher quality signal.

[–]SoCo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They simply bought the cell tower ping data, as appalling as cell operators selling this information is. So, they don't get any of the GPS data, only the cell tower triangulation.

Most modern smart phones have really high quality GPS modules. Mine reports 12 feet of accuracy, just sitting here. Turning on Google Location Services, will slightly improve your GPS location, by merging it with triangulate of cell towers and Wifi hospots from Google's database.....but using it mostly just employs you and your phone as a data collecting spy for Google, to map out where all the the Wifi hotspots are, what their SSID is and likely track your location while doing so. I find it funny that my smart phone's default camera app refuses to save GPS tag data to images and videos, if I don't turn Google Location Services on....to be fair though, It can really help your accuracy in very urban areas with tall buildings, as GPS signal reflections can skew your position with the common "urban canyon" effect.