Skip Smasher and "Cell Pinger"

I reviewed SkipSmasher's new "cell phone ping" service yesterday and am sorry to report that this is not a cellphone ping at all but simply an automated way to accomplish a simple pretext using a text message and a trapline.

A cell phone "ping" is quite simply the process of determining the location, with reasonable accuracy, of a cell phone at any given point in time by utilizing the phone GPS location aware capabilities. To "ping" in this context means to send a signal to a particular cell phone and have it respond with the requested data.  The term is derived from SONAR and echolocation when a technician would send out a sound wave, or ping, and wait for its return to locate another object.

New generation cell phones and mobile service providers are required by federal mandate to be or become GPS capable so that 911 operators will be able to determine the location of a caller who is making an emergency phone call. Some commercial companies have indicated that they have either developed sources within mobile telephone service providers to be able to get this information upon request or have access to the software interfaces to accomplish this on their own (or some variant thereof).

When a new digital cell phone is pinged, it determines its latitude and longitude via GPS and sends these coordinates back via the SMS system (the same system used to send text messages).  This means that in instances where a fugitive or other missing person has a GPS enabled cell phone (and that it has power when being polled, or pinged) that the cell phone can be located within a reasonable geographic area- some say within several feet of the cell phone. 

I’ve written a much more comprehensive article on cell phone pinging in my skip tracing manual if you are interested in the history and technology and its potential application to fugitive recovery.

Needless to say I was really excited when Robert Scott of SkipSmasher.com (who has created some truly excellent products in the past such as the Investigator’s Little Black Book series) teased me with the pending addition of this “breakthrough” pinging service a few weeks ago.  Disappointingly however, Skip Smasher’s “pinger” service falls short of the mark and really has nothing to do with a cellphone’s GPS capabilities.

Instead the service works by sending a text message to the target cell phone number (not all cell phones or services can receive text messages) with an urgent request to call a toll free number and enter a 4 digit code (used to parse the request and get results back to the right client).  The trick here is that the toll free number does not accept calls from mobile phones, forcing the curious target to call the trapline from a land line.  Presumably, “Cell Pinger” then traps the number and attempts to match it to subscriber information and/or account holder data in the Skip Smasher telephone number database.

I tested 4 telephone numbers with the following results:

1.  A text message enable phone on the Sprint-Nextel network received the text message from Skip Smasher 4 times though we only sent the request once (I’m not sure if that is intentional or a way to entice the recipient of the txt msg to call).  The service did capture and return the telephone number from which the target called but was unable to provide any additional information other than a Google Maps image of Gulf Breeze, FL where the telephone number prefix (932-XXXX) belongs.  This number was my unlisted home number.

2.  A text enabled mobile phone on the Verizon Wireless network did not receive Skip Smasher’s text message.  The Skip Smasher service instead returned a “routing error.”  We tested sending text messages to this phone via the web and other cell phones with no problems.  I could not re-run the test since there is a service defined block on sending repeat requests to the same phone with a 24 hour period.

3.  A text enabled cell phone on the Nextel network received the text message.  The service did capture and return the telephone number from which the target called but was unable to provide any additional information other than a Google Maps image of Panama City, FL where the telephone number prefix (522-XXXX) belongs.  This number was a listed business number, which is also indexed in Internet search engines.

4.  A Blackberry telephone on the Cingular network never received the text message.  I verified that this cell phone can receive text messages.  The Skip Smasher system indicates that the message is pending.

No street addresses or location of the mobile phones we tested, just a Google Map of the location in which the telephone number’s (used to return the call) prefix belongs.

Certainly, the power with Mr. Scott’s service is that the trapline will not accept calls from mobile cell phone numbers; this ties the target to another telephone number and a fixed physical location.  While this can be most useful for locating skips, at $3 a try, regardless of results, this is a reasonable “pretext-by-text message” attempt.  This is probably going to be good for investigations that warrant a “Hail Mary” toss at the end zone. 

While not a true ping, I’ll add it to my bag of tricks- it cannot hurt.  If Robert Scott would advocate adding bail enforcement agent to his list of approved clientele, I'd recommend the same for them.

Comments

[Aaron Kennedy]

I am a Bail Enforcement Agent in Salt Lake City, & Las Vegas.I am trying to find a way to be able to "ping" a cell phone to be able to locate one of my skips but I am having no luck in finding a decent source to do this. if there is anyway you could help or know of anything I could do please help thanks

[Patrick Welch]

I too was very excited about Skipsmasher's claims to ping cell phones. It would indeed be an invaluable resource, IF it did exactly what it claims. After reading this article, I am no longer bent out of shape for being DENIED access to "Skipsmasher". I assume that it is because I am a bail enforcement agent. Even though I do own my own company and complied with all their criteria for acceptance. But it sounds to me that a clever agent could just as easily text the fugitive with his own phone and achieve the same results. Much thanks for the article. I feel much better now.