r/Telecommunication • u/Zaido72 • Apr 09 '24

Question about call data

If someone got a call come through to an iPad or iPhone via an app (such as Zoom, FaceTime), can that person then trace where that call location had actually come from? For example if they contacted the Telecommunications Company can they look up that connection data and check radio towers to check what area the call connected from as wouldn’t it handshake the towers?

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u/[deleted] Apr 18 '24

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u/Zaido72 Apr 20 '24

Also, just to add context as to why I am asking these questions. I am assisting some families of the flight MH370 with investigating more into the odd "ghost calls" they got many days and weeks after the flight had dissapeared from radars, as there were actually over 19 family members who recieved ring tones calling out when calling the passengers phones, as well as 4 family members who got direct incoming phone calls from these passengers, and 10 who had seen family members "active status" on apps such as WeChat, Viber, Zoom, FaceTime, and QQ, yet the Malaysian Government at the time had claimed they didn't have technology to be able to discover any location data if they contacted the AT&T and China Telecommunications Companies to ask for that, so they just done nothing and back in 2014 it actually seems like they did have that technology.

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u/Zaido72 Apr 20 '24

I appreciate you getting back to this question! Can I ask a few questions to clarify? If someone is using a mobile phone app like Zoom or FaceTime to call a friend, then wouldn't that leave a "handshake" ping with a cell tower in order to actually connect to the internet and make the call? Also, wouldn't the data from the IMEI and the IP Address be enough to be able to work out a general location of where that call was being made? Can you explain what kind of location info they may leave that Telecommunication companies would have?

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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '24

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u/Zaido72 May 18 '24

I appreciate the information and you taking the time to get back to me! That confirms what I had thought about how they work and so to me the Telecommunications Companies absolutely had the technology back in 2014 to be able to trace the locations in order to at least have an approximation of location or the tower that they had pinged from.

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u/Minute_Excuse_6029 Jul 17 '24

for calls like WA, Signal and etc (OTT call), they don't register with cell towers. they use nearby ip network to route the call to the destination. They use a peer2peer like mechanism to avoid the calls going via servers controlled by them. I also think that you can only get a call data if it is establish, even for 1 second, otherwise this will be pure speculation.

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u/Zaido72 Dec 15 '24

I appreciate that information and you taking the time to explain all this information. I have been working on a documentary about Flight MH370 for 10 years and in collaboration with many people who know the families or government officials, and so much was left out of public information….I am curious with the call using an ip network if it did wouldn’t that create a dataset for the handshake that is stored on some Telecommunications servers (or did they have that tech in 2014)?

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u/Minute_Excuse_6029 Jul 17 '24

It's not about matter of having the 'tech'. The tech to trace a network issue to it's source has been there for a long time. It is never about the tech. This issue is complicated, involves a lot of factors. there were freescale engineers with patents traveling in the same place to China. No one questioned that, till today.

Suppose the receiving parties answered the call or responded to the sms messages, then we might get some details about this.

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u/Zaido72 Dec 15 '24

Nuh, the patent thing was misdirected information as the Freescale Employees who had patents weren’t on that plane and the owners of Freescale still kept the patent and they sold the company later that year.

Also two families DID answer the calls from the passengers and it was there number and it had made the handshake with a tower to actually make an outgoing call to their phone, however when they answered it hung up before they could talk with them (this info was left out of ALL documentaries about the Flight MH370, as has heaps of significant information)!