How Does Tracking Work?

One question we get here at Hellotracks, on a regular basis, is individuals looking to track someone else based on their phone number or someone is concerned that they can be tracked by just their phone number.

Some general information on phone tracking:

• It is impossible to track a phone’s exact location based solely on the phone number alone. Only well-funded police and national security agencies can even attempt to do this and even then it is a struggle to do this with extreme accuracy.
• There are methods to track phone numbers via databases of the service providers of said phone number along with triangulation methods from when it was last used in a telecommunications network. To even track a phone via a phone number during an actual call (e.g. what you see in the movies) requires resources, which are neither readily available nor legal for civilian use in most countries.

So how does Hellotracks actually track phone numbers? 

• In short, Hellotracks does not track phone numbers, we track smartphones or devices via the GPS chips that are present in all phones and tablets made today. These chips are associated with the phone number via the device itself, yet GPS chips are wholly separate from the phone number.

GPS chips can be actively tracked even when the internet is off, but generally only when you ask a software or service to do so. Hellotracks cannot track a phone or device when it is turned off as it needs a power source to operate. You can disable tracking in Hellotracks by tapping a button on the service. When you turn off 'Active' tracking, you are telling Hellotracks software that you do not want your location to be tracked via your GPS chip.