Can Telstra see the location..

[Jimmybob]

..of a mobile iPhone from the latest call that was made to it?

Tonight my Mum's iPhone was stolen from my brother's mate. He was off his face on xanax and alcohol, and is denying that he stole it. He was in our kitchen (where the phone was last seen) by himself for approx. 5 minutes whilst my brother was showering, he left before my brother got out.

I tried calling the mobile to see if he would answer, it called through two times to the normal "I'm sorry, the person you have called.. bla bla" then on the 3rd time, it called twice and started beeping as if it had been rejected.. I then called again and it now doesn't call at all, so I think it was turned off.

I've spoken to Telstra and have had the sim and handset blacked, rendering it useless.

Now... my question! Can Telstra see the location of the mobile phone from when the last call was made to it? I believe they can.. they're telling me that they can't and that they can only see the location of where the phone call to it was made (my house.....) and that still takes 24 hours to show up. Is there any point in me going into a Telstra store and demanding them to tell me the location of it?

Maybe someone on here works for Telstra and can answer this question for me.. I'm thinking that the person I was speaking to might not have high enough authority in the company to be able to obtain such information as it could potentially lead to lawsuits (say i found out the info and went and harmed the thief) and that only people high up in the company can see that kind of information.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense and is all over the place.. I'm just fuming because I've told my brother not to bring these drug ****ed pieces of shit into our house.

 

[I Lost My Keays]

..of a mobile iPhone from the latest call that was made to it?

Tonight my Mum's iPhone was stolen from my brother's mate. He was off his face on xanax and alcohol, and is denying that he stole it. He was in our kitchen (where the phone was last seen) by himself for approx. 5 minutes whilst my brother was showering, he left before my brother got out.

I tried calling the mobile to see if he would answer, it called through two times to the normal "I'm sorry, the person you have called.. bla bla" then on the 3rd time, it called twice and started beeping as if it had been rejected.. I then called again and it now doesn't call at all, so I think it was turned off.

I've spoken to Telstra and have had the sim and handset blacked, rendering it useless.

Now... my question! Can Telstra see the location of the mobile phone from when the last call was made to it? I believe they can.. they're telling me that they can't and that they can only see the location of where the phone call to it was made (my house.....) and that still takes 24 hours to show up. Is there any point in me going into a Telstra store and demanding them to tell me the location of it?

Maybe someone on here works for Telstra and can answer this question for me.. I'm thinking that the person I was speaking to might not have high enough authority in the company to be able to obtain such information as it could potentially lead to lawsuits (say i found out the info and went and harmed the thief) and that only people high up in the company can see that kind of information.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense and is all over the place.. I'm just fuming because I've told my brother not to bring these drug ****** pieces of shit into our house.

They should be able to track the phone

 

[grouse mate]

Im sure if Telstra wont help you the police can.

 

[Full Wingspan]

Telstra employees won't be able to locate the phone for you - their system simply does not allow them to perform such a task and I'm pretty sure its illegal (contrary to the Information Privacy Act).

However did your mum have an icloud account signed in on her device? If she did, did she have the 'find my iphone' function enabled?

If yes, then you may be able to salvage the device and remotely erase the data.

http://www.apple.com/au/icloud/find...permguid=36894adc-b814-432c-8ac1-e99d83b4a163.

Sometimes people will have the function automatically switched on when an icloud account is synced with their device, so even if you don't remember activating the feature, it may be enabled simply by logging in with the icloud account.

Knowledge; I'm a Telstra employee.

 

[RolandF1]

Im sure if Telstra wont help you the police can.

Telstra can trace the phone if its on but would only do so in the event of an emergency and it being police related matter. That's what I was told when someone I know lost their phone.

 

[Chief]

Telstra can trace the phone if its on but would only do so in the event of an emergency and it being police related matter. That's what I was told when someone I know lost their phone.

A friend of ours bought a house of a bipolar guy who would sometimes go off his medication, had been in prison etc. Every now and again they would get a visitor looking for the guy and crimemap.info shows about 30 incidents at that house.

Anyway one morning at about 2AM the police came banging on the door saying they'd received a mobile call saying the person was being stabbed. They went to that house because the phone account listed that address. Seems they couldn't trace a phone even in an emergency.

 

[RolandF1]

A friend of ours bought a house of a bipolar guy who would sometimes go off his medication, had been in prison etc. Every now and again they would get a visitor looking for the guy and crimemap.info shows about 30 incidents at that house.

Anyway one morning at about 2AM the police came banging on the door saying they'd received a mobile call saying the person was being stabbed. They went to that house because the phone account listed that address. Seems they couldn't trace a phone even in an emergency.

Maybe the call centre worker I was referring to was talking out of their arse. Thinking back to my brief time in a similar job there was some encouragement to make the shit up if you didn't know off the top of your head.

 

[ozasismick]

My wife had a similar thing happen only recently. iPhone and purse stolen from a shopping centre.

Phone linked through Find my iphone app, tried to ping the phone at various times but phone listed as 'offline'. I gave up at this point and figured whoever had the phone did a hard reset with all data including icloud account being wiped. I don't think this is too hard to do.

Reported to cops, thinking nothing would come of it. About a week after the incident, the phone was switched on, still connected to my wife's icloud, but my wifes contacts were progressively being deleted, the new recipient of the phone was updating her contacts which we could see in real time on the cloud, my wife's old iphone and an ipad. The name of the phone also changed from my wife's name to the new recipient. She could have called the phone anything, but used her first name which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. We were able to ping the phone finding the location despite the new recipient thinking that she could outsmart us by turning off location services. We also remotely made the phone sound an alarm at various times, and put on various messages through the find my iphone app to return the phone intact and stating the matter was with the cops, quoting their reference number. There is no doubt that she knew she was in possession of stolen goods.

With the phone on and the contacts downloading to my wife's account, we were able to get her first name, some google sleuthing of the contacts ultimately worked out her last name. From more googling we had her address and Facebook profile (public), that included a selfie taken with my wife's iphone, the phone was in the mirror reflection. Friends on her facebook profile, (some strangely spelt names for the stupid name thread) compared against phone contacts made the task of confirming it was the right girl through facebook quite easy. Amongst other things we were able to determine her regular hang outs, work & education history, and date of birth. All public information willingly put out there. All these details were provided to the cops, all they had to do was pick her up. This girl was not the sharpest pencil in the box.

With the cops not doing much after various follow ups providing the details we had (I appreciate this, they've got bigger crims to catch), we took the matter into our own hands. We knew she frequented a local establishment for a weekly event, and the location tracker confirmed she was there, we went out to pay a visit a few days ago. Unfortunately she had departed about 30 minutes prior. Driving home, seemingly on a fruitless quest across the other side of the city, someone that looked a lot like her happened to be walking down a local street, but needed a positive ID. Sounded the iphone alarm which went off as planned to confirm and called her name which she responded to. Then restrained her and called the cops. Cops put her in the back of a divvy van, the wife & I gave statements to cops. They were impressed we were able to track down the phone, didn't seem fazed we took the law into our own hands, and said we won't be charged with Assault (not that I did anything apart from holding her arm). Apparently the guy who originally stole it and sold to this girl has a history, cops believe he is part of a bigger syndicate flipping stolen goods.

We didn't block the phone through the IMEI number as figured with the phone bricked, we wouldn't be able to ping it at all as the phone needs an internet connection, 3G or wifi to report back. If we did that, we assumed she would probably turn off the phone and bin it which isn't much use to us.

For us it wasn't so much about the phone, but the images & videos contained on there. I hadn't clicked the option on iCloud to upload photos & videos remotely to the cloud when I set it up, but apparently it still saves the previous 1,000 images I think in a lower resolution (wife takes a lot of photos of the kids) anyway. This almost goes back to the date she got the phone originally, but think we have lost videos.

Still don't have the phone back as it's with the cops now, will get it back and find out about the status of pics and videos eventually I guess.

Long story, short, if the assailant is dumb enough not to do a proper wipe on the phone, the find my iphone app will track it down.

 

[Damon_3388]

Now... my question! Can Telstra see the location of the mobile phone from when the last call was made to it? I believe they can.. they're telling me that they can't and that they can only see the location of where the phone call to it was made (my house.....) and that still takes 24 hours to show up. Is there any point in me going into a Telstra store and demanding them to tell me the location of it?

Bigpond.com > My Account (might need to register if you don't already use it > View My Bill > PDF bill

or

Just read your paper bill

Should have calls from said mobile itemised, and list the location of the nearest mobile tower to where the call was made, giving you an approximate location.

Maybe the call centre worker I was referring to was talking out of their arse. Thinking back to my brief time in a similar job there was some encouragement to make the shit up if you didn't know off the top of your head.

As someone who has worked in similar roles, anyone who encourages that is an utter dickhead. It just makes other people's jobs harder, when you have to give the person the proper information or tell them "XYZ" can't be done, and the customer gets shitty because they've been told different things by different people. If you don't know something, admit it and do what you can to find out, and if you can't do something or something isn't possible, just say so. Simple.

 

[little graham]

crimemap.info

Thats pretty cool, is their one that does SA?

 

[RolandF1]

As someone who has worked in similar roles, anyone who encourages that is an utter dickhead. It just makes other people's jobs harder, when you have to give the person the proper information or tell them "XYZ" can't be done, and the customer gets shitty because they've been told different things by different people. If you don't know something, admit it and do what you can to find out, and if you can't do something or something isn't possible, just say so. Simple.

Oh absolutely I agree. Unfortunately there was this inbuilt culture at the place that phone calls needed to be quick and fast, who cares if you didn't fully help the person on the other end! They even had a spreadsheet sent out every week which included your average length of time in conversation. I lasted about 3 months in the job in part because my convos were longer than average, despite taking more calls than most in the team.

 

[telsor]

I used to work in setting up a mobile phone billing system, and the phone tower used is recorded (source, destination, start time, end time, connecting number).

The 'fun fact' however is that a lot of calls aren't billed (was ~50/50, the company I worked for had a competitive advantage because we had a reprocessing system that took it to ~55%...It's probably higher now), because they can't capture that information fast/well enough (short call, relatively local, same carrier is more likely to be 'free').

So if it was a short call, there is a fair chance they really don't have the info, and lets face it, if they can't get it for billing, they really can't get it.