This is news to me:


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-fake-cellphone-towers-intercepting-162645809.html


Pretty familiar with the all spying techniques that cops use, but think they are using these fake towers to spy on your texts and calls?

Have you heard about Stingray and Hailstorm?:

"Computer World", points out that the fake towers give themselves away by crushing down the performance of your phone from 4G to 2G while the intercept is taking place. So if you see your phone operating on a slow download signal while you're near a military base ... maybe make that call from somewhere else.

In an amazing coincidence, police departments in a handful of U.S. cities have been operating "Stingray" or "Hailstorm" towers, which — you guessed it — conduct surveillance on mobile phone activity. They do that by jamming mobile phone signals, forcing phones to drop down from 4G and 3G network bands to the older, more insecure 2G band."

Now, all they need are more Drones....to spy on everyone and everything else.
Not the Country I grew up in.

 

Thanks for sharing... and yes, what a shocking coincidence that is!

 

wired has a story on this and a map of sorts showing locations of fake towers. the story is about a new android OS that informs users of the hack in progress. Not yet available for the general public but coming soon.

 

all towers are required to be registered with th fcc. look on the fence of the tower site for the fcc registration number, and then look it up on the fcc site. that should tell you the owner of the tower.

 

all towers are required to be registered with th fcc. look on the fence of the tower site for the fcc registration number, and then look it up on the fcc site.

Searching the ULS can be done on a larger scale that looking at a tower fence.

Of course, all this assumes the entity has "complied" with the requirement. What fictitious name is the CIA or FBI or Homeland Security using this week on their "registrations"?

 

This doesn't surprise or worry me. There are many emergency, private, amateur, and government line of site communications systems thru out the country. These towers aren't disguised, there are not on the cell phone carriers network.

 

Is there anyone here who has had cell phone experience? I wonder how much the cell phone carriers depend on the internet? By that I mean.....if the internet went down........can you still make telephone calls? I talking about cell phones.

 

I'd have to ask a tenant in my building AirCom aka TEOCO about that. I know for a fact that if the internet went down or the data fiber to the towers went down you would definitely lose all data, unsure about phone calls though.