Can special services listen to your conversations and read text messages? Is it easy to track your location? Is it dangerous to live near base stations? Answers to these and other burning questions.
First, a little theory. Cellular communication is nicknamed cellular because of the specific coverage area. Each phone, when it wants to call, answer a call or send a drunken text message to an ex, communicates with a special transceiver – a base station.
Base stations are our guides to the world of high technology. You've probably seen them on houses, masts, towers and even poles. Several flat rectangular antennas one to two meters high and a bunch of wires that converge into a clever box. Each base station covers a certain area of the territory – a cell. It has a high range (up to a couple of tens of kilometers), but the more there are per unit area, the better communication will be.
All BSs are connected to a huge computer – a switch. It is he who decides whether you can call. With a request to comment on some of the myths, we turned to Oleg Plotnikov, engineer of the first category of the cellular communication equipment maintenance department of OJSC Rostelecom.
The first myth
Living near base stations is dangerous.
It seems to us that if an antenna hangs outside the window, then it probably emits something, and therefore whose wife has a headache for a week. In fact, the root of evil is much closer to you – right at your ear!
The mobile phone tries to maintain a stable connection with the station. In order not to get lost himself, and not to drown out other subscribers, the power of his transmitter floats. The closer it is to the antenna, the smaller it is. The further – the more.
It turns out that at a distance from the base station, you force your phone to inflate the power to the limit, and you bring this radiation source directly to your head. But if the antenna is hanging outside your window, then the situation is the opposite. All the harm from this hellish device dissipates literally after twenty meters, but the mobile phone works at minimum power and gives almost nothing to the head.
It is important to clarify here that there is no proven harm from cellular communications. That is, even at the limit of power, the phone, in theory, will not cause you problems. As well as the antenna outside the window (the radiation of the transmitters is strictly normalized, and this is strictly monitored). But if we still talk about where we are less exposed, the antenna outside the window is preferable, since your mobile phone does not heat up.
Verdict: myth!
The second myth
Using the phone, you can easily track the location of its owner.
Not so easy, but it can be done. As many as three ways.
The first is a special program on your smartphone. It determines the coordinates of the location (if there is a GPS-module) or estimates it by the available networks around. After all, each base station has an address binding and calmly shares it with the phone. Further, the coordinates are merged via the Internet. Thus, a malicious program can easily find out that you are sitting in a bar, and not sweating in a rocking chair.
The second is a classic three-point bearing. Even pensioners from the KGB have not dealt with this antiquity for a long time. It is necessary to intercept the signal of a specific phone in three places and, by its strength, determine the distance from the direction finder. Three circles are drawn on the map, and the desired object is located where they converge. This is how the transmitters of Soviet spies in Germany during the Third Reich were identified. Now the technology is working, but absolutely unnecessary, because …
Third way. The base station, as we know, has a coordinate reference. That is, the address where it stands is precisely known. For a stable connection, the transmitter measures the distance to your phone. Just for the very same power adjustment. And each antenna does not cover a circle, but only a small part of it, usually about a third. Thus, knowing the antenna, the place of its installation, its direction and distance from it to the desired subscriber, you can more or less say exactly where it is. The error here is large, up to a kilometer, but in reality you rarely have to look for someone who is not clear where. For example, if we know that a swindler after a theft always comes in to eat mom’s pies, and we see mom’s address in that area, there is a high probability that it’s from mom’s place to look for him.
Verdict: true!
The third myth
At the time of cataclysms, accidents or terrorist attacks, cellular communications are turned off in order to prevent panic.
The only case of such a shutdown known to us was the moment of the storming of the theater on Dubrovka, when the hostages of “Nord-Ost” were sitting there. In principle, intelligence agencies can ask operators to turn off the antennas at a specific location for a good reason. But more often the reason for the inoperability of cellular communication is different.
For example, when a meteorite fell in Chelyabinsk in 2013, everyone considered it his duty to get a mobile phone and call relatives. People can be understood, but a base station has a certain capacity: the number of subscribers that it can “pull” at the same time. And the switch has capacity: the number of simultaneous connections. When this limit is exceeded, so-called rejections begin.
In other words, the entire system “pulls” only the maximum number of conversations and traffic, and discards all the rest without explanation. This is one of the standard operating modes of cellular communication, there is nothing emergency in it. But calling a friend and telling that Godzilla walks around your city is unlikely to succeed: everyone wants to share. The way to overcome this limitation is simple – try to dial the number over and over again. Sooner or later, you will be among those that the system can handle. However, with such actions you increase the load on the network and disturb others.
Verdict: a myth with a grain of truth.
The fourth myth
Special services can listen to any conversation and read any SMS.
If you are not a supporter of conspiracy theory, then read what SORM is. In short, this abbreviation stands for the system of operational-search measures. On each switch, on each automatic telephone exchange, on each communication center, the legislation prescribes to install equipment to intercept information. Intelligence agencies can really listen to any conversations and read any messages. But, from experience, it is difficult for them to do this due to the fact that most of the voice traffic is idle chatter. Therefore, they only follow those who, in one way or another, attracted their attention. And to say the word “bomb” in a conversation is not enough here. There are not enough ears for all the jokers!
But…
Verdict: true.
Fifth myth
The more “sticks” on the phone, the better the connection.
It would seem an obvious thing, but in practice it often does not work. To begin with, the phones measure the signal strength with “sticks” not in decibels or watts, but in parrots. Each manufacturer rather conventionally sets its own scale, so in the same place one device can measure three divisions, and the other – five. There is no single standard for antenna scale measurements.
The second point is that even with a strong signal from the base station, it cannot always serve you. Example: the above case with the Chelyabinsk meteorite. For many subscribers, the antenna was almost in sight, the phone showed a good signal level, but there was no sense in it, since the base station was overloaded.
In principle, we can say that in general, a lot of sticks on the phone is a good signal. But there are too many particulars to draw an unambiguous conclusion.
Verdict: Truth with many caveats.
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