How do the police or similiar track a cellular phone´s location?
When the cell phone the police tracking has a call ongoing, do they have to stay online for a certain period of time to get the location? Can you track it when it´s not connected? I´m only interested how they do it, not interested for personal use… 
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about 2 years ago
Trangulation
about 2 years ago
Cell phone towers can locate a cell phone’s location based on the closest cell phone tower the signal was last picked up at. It doesn’t have to be on a call, just powered on.
about 2 years ago
Well, your cell phone sends out a signal to a “tower”. That signal tells where you are based on where its coming from.
about 2 years ago
depending on the sophistication of the tool their using, first step is finding out which Cell tower, or towers its connected to. There is no easy way to pin point the EXACT location of a cell phone, but they can get the general vicinity. Hence why 911 has an issue with tracking people by a cell the way you can from the home phone.
A cell site has an average range of about 25 miles, so as the user above posted, if your conencted to multiple towers, or have multiple cells reporting your EID, they can triangulate your location within a few miles. but takes at least 4 towers to get a good location.
If the phone has a GPS tracking built in, they can use the EID of the phone beyond that point.
If the phone is off, no you cannot track it
about 2 years ago
that’s* a secret!
about 2 years ago
Tracking through cell tower signals..TV shows have that on all the times..with crime TV shows..
about 2 years ago
Most Sheriff’s Offices use a method called triangulation. They can bounce the cell signal off of three towers and then measure distance from each, resulting in three intersecting circles which are the potential location of the caller.
Our local sheriff can’t do that yet. They can tell what tower the call is coming from, and then notify the police in that city, but that’s it.