Do cell phone companies track text messages?
Question by hellio89: Do cell phone companies track text messages?
A friend told me that the government can track the text messages being sent and received that are being used within all major cell phone companies. I would guess that At&t, verizon, and t-mobile would have to many text message to keep track of. Is this true?
Best answer:
Answer by mimiBOO
they dont on prepaid phones any other company yes!
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I think so.
The gov searces for key words like bombs and stuff like that if thats what you want
yes but it goes by key words and were they are going.
No, thats a conspiracy theory.
It’s under the Patriot Act passed in 2001 briefly after the 9/11 attack. The purpose is to find potential terrorist suspects. It was meant to only monitor oversea callers to the U.S. However, the U.S. government later demanded cell phone companies to cooperate and hang in their logs, thus expanding the program onto domestic calls as well (it’s a big controversy). The program is carried out by the National Security Agency in Maryland. The computer will first capture calls that contain sensitive words such as president, white house, bomb, or suicide in multiple languages. Then the it further filters them and sends them to the employees to listen. Text messages are easier to tap because they are not encrypted, however, text monitoring is not widely done because criminals seldom use text messages (due to the fact that they would leave traceable evidence to the DA). Secret Service however, will monitor all the calls and text messages within 1 mile radius of the president and the VP.
YOU SAID cellphone companies not the government. I suppose but on a case to case basis, and not randomly or all the time. On what basis would a cellphone companies track every text messages of let say 10 million people for? This is a very huge job don’t you think? Would you track the text message of your next door neighbor without being paid? Of course not. You rather watch NBA or hockey than do that without being paid right or left? Right.
SO IMAGINE a paid employee from these companies you mention AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. You are task to track all the tex messages of 10 million subscribers of these companies. Would you do it? You are now being paid for this. Are you not going to complain? This is 10 million people we are talking about and you are merely one person tracking down their text messages in every given minute or hour. The question is CAN YOU DO IT? You will piss in front of the computer hacking machines because you are not allowed to leave your seat or your job even for a minute or get a coffee or donut for that matter. You will developed an eye sore staring most of the time to the computer screen, you might developed a back injury because of this….and many more.
NOW THE QUESTION IS, why would a cellphone company or companies track text messages for? Unless they are requested either by the agency like FBI or an individual being scam by another subscriber. So in reality, cellphone companies DO NOT TRACK text messages unless authorized. Because cellphone companies job is to sell their hardwares or businesses not to track individual text messages or involved themselves with any person’s private lives.
Possibly, there’s no oversight for these things.
ALL text messages are tracked.
We can get that info with a court order.
Sure can. The telecom companies can isolate the txt messages to and from a specific phone no problem.
If you’re concerned about sensitive information being intercepted, I would suggest you learn how to make and use what’s known as a “one time pad.” It’s a form of cryptography that will, if properly used, give you unbreakable messages. Except for the key generation (which can be done on your computer with a progam called Random Labs. google “random labs”.), it’s all done with pen and paper, so you can use it with any phone capable of text messages, you don’t need a smart phone with special software or anything. I’ll explain it real quick. You use a program called Random Labs (or any other cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator) to generate keys. You want to include characters A through Z (with a lowercase o, because capital looks identical to the number 0), _ (underscore, which represents a space), and 1 through 9. They keys will be a long string of random numbers, letters, and an underscore. Like:
DEHZI AIS9D S_YMZ etc.
Suppose you wanted to send a message “shoot now” (which, after replacing spaces with underscores, would become shoot_now). Add the numerical value of the key’s letters to the message’s letters. Like A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, etc. up to Y=25, Z=26. Then _=27, 0=28, 1=29, etc. up to 8=36, 9=37. There’s a total number of 37 characters in our alphabet.
D E H Z I A I S 9
S H O O T _ N O W
D=4, S=19…19+4=23. 23=W, so that’s the first letter of the ciphertext. What we’d send in a text message, secure from pigs’ eavesdropping. To contine…
E=5, H=8. 5+8=13. 13=M
H=8, O=15. 8+15=23. 23=W
Z=26, O=15. 26+15=41. Since 37 is the top number (37=9), we’d subtract 37 from 41. 41-37=4. 4=D
So our ciphertext so far is WMWD. That’s what we’d send in the text message. If we wanted to decrypt that, we’d work in reverse. Subtract the key (DEHZ) from the ciphertext (WMWD).
W M W D
D E H Z
W=23, D=4. 23-4=19. 19=S.
M=13, E=5. 13-5=8. 8=H
W=23, H=8. 23-8=15. 15=O
D=4, Z=26. Can’t subtract 26 from 4, so you’d add 37 to 4 then subtract 26. (4+37)-26=15. 15=O
So our plain text so far is SHOO
Alternatively, if you want to generate keys without a computer, you can do it the old fashion method. Get 37 identical items, like poker chips, pennies, bottle caps, etc, and write on them every letter of your alphabet (a through z, underscore, 1 though 9). Put them in something, shake them, draw one out, write it down, put it back in, and repeat. Very slow, but it works.
I’ll do the entire thing here, so you can see it all…
D E H Z I A I S 9
S H O O T _ N O W
Key | Text…………………Ciphertext
D=4, S=19…19+4=23. 23=W
E=5, H=8. 5+8=13. 13=M
H=8, O=15. 8+15=23. 23=W
Z=26, O=15. 26+15=41 41>37 so 41-37=4. 4=D
I=9, T=20. 20+9=29. 29=1
A=1, _=27. 1+27=28. 28=0
i=9, N=14. 9+14=23. 23=W
S=19, O=15. 19+15=34. 34=6
9=37, W=23. 37+23=60. 60>37 so 60-37=23. 23=W
Assuming I did my math right (you’d want to double check if doing it for real), our ciphertext in its entirety is
WMWD1 0W6W