Are beepers untraceable?
Due to the resent events, I hear that beepers work different to how cellphones work, since supposedly, beepers only receive signals but they do not send them. Since RSM has being telling us how cellphone are tracking devices because of the way they work, I wonder if beepers could be a viable substitute.
I've never used a beeper, and I'm guessing that they might have their own problems. So I wanted to ask you guys if you knew.
For instance, I'm guessing the service is no longer available, specially in Mexico where I live, and even if it is, I'm guessing they only work for the city were you live? I mean if I were to travel inside the country it probably wouldn't work out side of my city would they? In conclusion, I'm guessing that coverage probably suck.
Remembering beepers, makes me think on how technologies come and go, and I wonder if there will ever be a good substitute to cellphones which won't track you. I remember RSM asking engineers to come up with a way to stop a cellphone to be traceable, but I haven't here anything came out from that.
Where I live, drugs cartels are a really big problem, and if such solution exist, I'm guessing they would be using it by now.
Now that I think about it, they are also called pagers. And the resent events I was referring to was that it appears they are being weaponized some how to explode.
ah yes I saw some videos about that. Seems best these days to just have nothing.
Although it's very difficult these days.
I do like the idea of swapping the phone for a pager/beeper (anything that replaces a cell phone, really). This video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EHzzfqB4uY) was helpful to me understanding pagers. I remember my dad having one but cell phones pretty much wiped them out before I needed a pager.
Since they didn't have any cellular connections, would they receive every page in a broadcast? (but filter out the ones for you)
> I wonder if beepers could be a viable substitute
Beepers or pagers are just receivers, normally they are not able to send anything.
I wouldn't mind having to find some wifi around to try to response. If I am not misremembering, back then it was necessary to call a number and speak out your message to the operator so that the message could be send to the beeper owner, but now days if the service is indeed still around I'm sure there might be a way to send it from a site or by email maybe. Though of course, messages would have to be not very personals at all since probably the company providing the service would be able to see them.
The main use for something like this for me, would be for emergencies or work. I know how important privacy is, but when ever I've thought on not using a cellphone I think on my mom and my pop. I have also though that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a back up cellphone just in case I myself were on an emergency. Thought I have heard the those thing track you even if they are turned off. I wouldn't use something fancy, just those system integrated regular old cellphones. Another option is having those phones with a kill switch, though I have read in this forum that those switches are very little so maybe that wouldn't be very practical on an emergency situation.
Anyway sorry for all my rambling, I have though about something like this for a while and I wanted to share my day dreaming. Thank you.
The ideal would be to encrypt the messages that are sent and to use GNU/Linux and some SDR to receive them and decrypt them instead of having to use a pager. This is relatively easy to do with a laptop and some SDR connected through USB (like rtl_sdr compatible cards that work with 100% free software as far as I understand) for instance but that doesn't necessarily means that this could be packed in some convenient-to-use setup (like some mobile device running free software and that is reliable, whose battery last for a long time, etc).
In addition using these often require a subscription and I've no idea if these are accessible to individuals. That might depend on the operators and the region.