People tend to assume that their location is accessible only when they consciously share it by turning on GPS or allowing an app location access. Unfortunately, the truth is more unsettling.
Your phone number alone can be enough for someone to find out where you are. Understanding how this works and who can actually access your location is the first step to protecting yourself.
In this guide, we’ll tackle some common privacy questions, such as “how can someone track my location with my phone number” and “how to prevent third parties from tracking my location.”
Can Someone Track Your Location With Your Phone Number?
Yes, your location can be tracked based on your phone number. While a phone number itself doesn’t broadcast GPS coordinates, it is tied to a mobile network identity. As long as your SIM is active and connected to the network, it’s communicating with cell towers, and that communication can be used to estimate location, even without GPS.
What makes this possible is the signaling protocol SS7 (Signaling System No. 7), developed in 1975 and still in use today.
SS7 was designed to route calls and text messages across carriers worldwide. To do that, it needs to know which cell tower your phone is connected to, and that information, by design, is tied to your phone number.
The problem is that SS7 was built on trust rather than verification. Any party with access to the SS7 network can send queries that the system treats as legitimate, so someone with that access can request your location to the nearest cell tower using nothing but your phone number.
SS7 attacks aren’t the only concern.
Most carriers also log which cell towers your phone connects to regularly, which creates a historical record of your movements. That record exists whether or not you’ve done anything to expose yourself, and it’s tied directly to your phone number.
Not all mobile carriers handle that data the same way or rely on the SS7 protocol. Privacy-first carriers like Cape eliminated their SS7 dependency by building a proprietary signaling proxy to enhance mobile network security.
Cape is also built to:
- Minimize data collection
- Retain call logs for only 1 day
With this approach, Cape limits the amount of location data that exists in the first place.
Can They Track Your Phone Number When Location Services Are Off?
Turning off location services on your phone stops apps from accessing your GPS, but it doesn’t stop your phone from connecting to cell towers.
When your location services are off:
- Your phone number stops sharing data with apps (in most cases)
- Apps can’t directly access a precise location via GPS
However, your phone still communicates with the network by:
- Connecting to nearby cell towers
- Scanning for Wi-Fi networks
- Exposing your approximate location through your IP address
If your phone is on and connected to a cellular network, it’s pinging towers, and those connections are tied to your number. Network-level tracking occurs at the carrier infrastructure level, outside your phone's settings.
That said, you should still disable location tracking to prevent apps from collecting your data and selling it to data brokers.
Who Can Track a Phone Number?
Not everyone can track a phone number. The average person doesn’t have the technical skills or legal access to do it. Stalkerware is more accessible to ordinary people, but that requires physical access to your device, not only your phone number.
However, some groups can access the location data under specific circumstances. We’ve outlined who those groups are and whether that access is legal.
Who Can Access Location Data | Legal Requirement |
Law enforcement | A warrant is required in most cases (following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Carpenter v. United States (2018), which established that accessing historical cell location data constitutes a Fourth Amendment search). |
Your mobile carrier | No legal restrictions apply, so carriers generate and retain this data automatically as part of network operations. |
Apps and websites | No restrictions apply if you grant location permission. |
Surveillance vendors | No consistent legal framework exists currently. Many operate in legal gray areas or through government contracts. |
Stalkerware | It is illegal without the person’s consent in most jurisdictions. |
Data brokers (indirectly) | Purchasing and reselling location data from apps or carriers is generally legal in the United States. |
How Do You Know If Someone Is Tracking Your Location?
Network-level tracking through SS7 or your carrier is undetectable by the target user. It happens outside your device and leaves no trace.
Stalkerware, however, can leave traces. The signs aren’t always obvious, but you can spot unusual activities that can signal that something isn’t right, such as:
- The battery is draining faster than usual: Stalkerware runs continuously in the background, placing a constant load on your battery.
- Unusual spikes in mobile data usage: The app has to transmit your location and other data to a remote server. That transmission shows up in your data usage, often as an unfamiliar app consuming bandwidth in the background.
- Phone is warm when idle: If your phone is warm when you’re not using it, it could signal that background processes you didn’t initiate are running.
- You notice apps you don’t recognize: Stalkware disguises itself as a random app. Noticing an app you don’t remember installing could be a sign of wrongdoing.
- Phone is behaving strangely: When malware is active, it could cause your phone to restart, shut down, freeze, or slow down unexpectedly.
If you suspect stalkerware, checking your app permissions is a good starting point. On Android, you can find it under App location permissions, and on an iOS device, it should be under Location Services.
Keep in mind that if you’re in a situation involving an abusive relationship, removing stalkerware without a plan can escalate the situation. Instead, reach out to the Coalition Against Stalkerware, the initiative that connects people with support resources to help them navigate the process without putting themselves at greater risk.
How To Prevent Location Tracking
To keep your location and other personal information private, focus on limiting the data you expose and to whom. Since tracking can occur through apps, carriers, and network data, effective protection must cover these sources.
Some of the key steps for preventing location tracking and increasing your data privacy include:
- Disable location access for apps that don’t need it
- Turn off location services
- Use a VPN on public Wi-FI
- Run a security scan
- Use a privacy-first mobile carrier
Disable Location Services for Apps That Don’t Need It
Review app permissions and revoke location access for non-essential apps. If an app doesn’t need your location to function, it shouldn’t have access.
Since apps are among the biggest sources of data leakage, reviewing permissions and even deleting unused apps can help prevent data brokers from accessing and linking your phone number. In case you’ve been receiving an increased number of spam texts and calls, you can try removing your phone number from data brokers' lists.
Turn Off Location Services
Even if you have an app that needs location access, you should turn off location services as soon as you're done using it. The best practice is to:
- Keep location data off by default
- Enable location services only when necessary (for apps such as maps or delivery apps)
To minimize passive data collection, you can set location access to “only while using” instead of “always.” You can do so on both Android and iPhone.
Use a VPN for Public Wi-Fi
A virtual private network (VPN) can protect your browsing privacy and reduce web-based location profiling. It encrypts your internet traffic and masks your IP address, which makes it harder for hackers to track your activity or infer your location.
However, a VPN does not:
- Hide your IP-based location
- Stop GPS tracking
- Stop cell tower tracking
While a VPN won’t stop SS7-based tracking, it limits exposure to network-level snooping that could otherwise reveal information about your location.
Run a Security Scan
Mobile security apps like Malwarebytes, Lookout, and Bitdefender can detect known stalkerware signatures on your phone. Don’t count on them to catch everything, since stalkerware evolves fast, so newer ones may not yet be in detection databases.
Use a Privacy-First Mobile Carrier
To prevent tracking your location by phone number, you might need to reconsider your mobile carrier. If they rely on SS7 or aren’t privacy-focused, you should switch to a carrier that prioritizes security and minimizes data collection and exposure.
Your carrier also has access to your location data, regardless of what settings you’ve enabled on your phone. What’s even more concerning is that the major U.S. carriers, including AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, have all faced documented cases of mishandling or selling that data.
What will increase your security and privacy at the network level is choosing a privacy-first carrier. Cape, for example, operates its own mobile network designed to address the security gaps left by traditional carriers.
Cape’s Network Lock feature checks every network request for location update or attaching your phone to a new network. Only if the request location matches your real location will your phone be able to connect.
Cape also doesn’t collect or store your exact location. Instead, the location checks are done locally. Let’s dive deeper into why Cape is the right choice for privacy-conscious subscribers.
Cape: The Carrier Built for Security and Privacy
Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier designed to keep your communications safe from surveillance and misuse. Unlike traditional cell phone plan providers, our business model centers around providing you with premium and secure call, text, and data, rather than harvesting and selling your information.
Our service is built from the ground up with privacy and security at its core, offering unique features like:
Privacy & Security Feature | Description |
Cape doesn’t ask for your name, address, or Social Security number. We only collect the information necessary to provide service, and we retain that information for the minimum amount of time possible. | |
Traditional carriers rely on a fixed International Mobile Subscriber ID (IMSI) to connect your device to cellular networks. This is a vulnerability that lets carriers, advertisers, and bad actors identify and track your device. Cape lets subscribers automatically rotate their IMSI every 24 hours, making it infinitely more difficult to track you or your device. | |
Many services ask for your phone number, but sharing it exposes you to spam, scammers, data brokers, and a variety of other risks. VoIPs, on the other hand, don’t work with 2FA, cost extra, and aren’t encrypted. With Cape, you get two free additional SMS/MMS lines that are middle-to-end encrypted. | |
Most U.S. carriers store your call and text metadata for years, sometimes indefinitely. Cape is built to forget, so call data records (CDRs) are deleted after just 24 hours. | |
Cape nullifies the threat of SIM swapping by completely removing humans from the loop. During signup, you receive a 24-word phrase that generates a private key tied to your number. This effectively means that no one (but you) can move your number to a new carrier or device, not even Cape. | |
Legacy network protocols, like SS7, leave you vulnerable to hackers that can track your location, intercept your calls and texts, and steal sensitive information. Cape’s Network Lock relies on a proprietary signaling proxy to verify that your device’s physical location matches the network to which it’s trying to connect. If we detect anything out of the ordinary, Cape automatically blocks the connection, nullifying the potential threat. | |
Traditional voicemail systems are outdated, unencrypted, and another security hole bad actors can exploit to gain access to your sensitive information. Cape encrypts all voicemails, ensuring only you can access them. | |
While roaming, your phone connects to local telecom providers to enable service. But, who knows who might be listening on the other end. Cape provides you with peace of mind by routing your traffic through our U.S.-based mobile core, ensuring your identity, data, and communications remain private and secure. |
Ditch Legacy Carriers: Get Cape Today
Cape is a “Heavy” Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), meaning we own our mobile core and provision our own SIMs. This gives us full control over how accounts are authenticated and what data is collected (and for how long), and is how we are able to provide privacy and security features no other carrier on the market can offer.
Get started with Cape today and enjoy the peace of mind, knowing you are fully protected against scammers, hackers, bad actors, and other mobile threats.
To help protect more than just your phone, we’ve partnered with Proton. As a new Cape subscriber, you can choose between Proton Unlimited and Proton VPN Plus for just $1 for six months.
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