My phone keeps going to Mumbai.
Discussion
Often I pick up my phone in the morning and the current weather shows as sunny and warm. Closer inspection reveals that the BBC Weather app is giving the weather for Mumbai.
Looking at the location history shows that my phone thinks it is in Mumbai quite often, particularly at night when I'm not using it. Like the early hours of today:
It is always the same location in Mumbai, zooming in shows it is next to a major station. The KML file shows repeated instances with coordinates of 72.8884664 19.0695445, as shown by the distance from starting location across the bottom.
Location services is set to use fine location and GPS is enabled. Usually the location tracking is exact. I'm assuming that this is the location of a phone mast in Mumbai, and for some reason when the phone is idle at night it sometimes gets a tower descriptor which matches one in Mumbai rather than Hampshire. Apart from that, any ideas? Phone is a Note 3 on Three.
Looking at the location history shows that my phone thinks it is in Mumbai quite often, particularly at night when I'm not using it. Like the early hours of today:
It is always the same location in Mumbai, zooming in shows it is next to a major station. The KML file shows repeated instances with coordinates of 72.8884664 19.0695445, as shown by the distance from starting location across the bottom.
Location services is set to use fine location and GPS is enabled. Usually the location tracking is exact. I'm assuming that this is the location of a phone mast in Mumbai, and for some reason when the phone is idle at night it sometimes gets a tower descriptor which matches one in Mumbai rather than Hampshire. Apart from that, any ideas? Phone is a Note 3 on Three.
Nothing else odd apart from location glitches - and I'm very fussy about security.
Trawling back through past weeks and months of location history I can see that particular location in Mumbai crops up quite often. However, there are also cases when travelling where the normal sequence of locations is interspersed with somewhere completely different. I can see one from a few weeks ago where I drove from Southampton to Bournemouth and back. All the location points look correct except for a few arbitrary ones that are in the middle of a field near Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire.
It would seem to be an artifact of the location handling, I'm guessing that it occurs when it gets the location from other sources than GPS.
Very odd though.
Trawling back through past weeks and months of location history I can see that particular location in Mumbai crops up quite often. However, there are also cases when travelling where the normal sequence of locations is interspersed with somewhere completely different. I can see one from a few weeks ago where I drove from Southampton to Bournemouth and back. All the location points look correct except for a few arbitrary ones that are in the middle of a field near Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire.
It would seem to be an artifact of the location handling, I'm guessing that it occurs when it gets the location from other sources than GPS.
Very odd though.
I've had something similar when I was near a train station in the North of England and Google thought I was in Germany. I am pretty sure it's because it's picked up a strong signal from a WiFi access point which used to be a different country, i.e. Germany in my case or Mumbai in yours.
I've never looked into to see if there is any fact behind my guess though!
I've never looked into to see if there is any fact behind my guess though!
This one fits with that theory. On this day I was in Southampton, on board the Queen Mary 2. I also travelled around the Southampton area so there are a large number of perfectly correct locations.
However, according to my phone I was also at various times in New York (where the QM2 had come from) and Hamburg (where it was going to).
However, according to my phone I was also at various times in New York (where the QM2 had come from) and Hamburg (where it was going to).
karma mechanic said:
Nothing else odd apart from location glitches - and I'm very fussy about security.
Trawling back through past weeks and months of location history I can see that particular location in Mumbai crops up quite often. However, there are also cases when travelling where the normal sequence of locations is interspersed with somewhere completely different. I can see one from a few weeks ago where I drove from Southampton to Bournemouth and back. All the location points look correct except for a few arbitrary ones that are in the middle of a field near Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire.
It would seem to be an artifact of the location handling, I'm guessing that it occurs when it gets the location from other sources than GPS.
Very odd though.
Try changing the SSID and MAC address (if you can) of your home WiFi router - as per the previous poster, it may be that Google's location service is confusing your home network with one Google has in the database located in Mumbai.Trawling back through past weeks and months of location history I can see that particular location in Mumbai crops up quite often. However, there are also cases when travelling where the normal sequence of locations is interspersed with somewhere completely different. I can see one from a few weeks ago where I drove from Southampton to Bournemouth and back. All the location points look correct except for a few arbitrary ones that are in the middle of a field near Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire.
It would seem to be an artifact of the location handling, I'm guessing that it occurs when it gets the location from other sources than GPS.
Very odd though.
karma mechanic said:
This one fits with that theory. On this day I was in Southampton, on board the Queen Mary 2. I also travelled around the Southampton area so there are a large number of perfectly correct locations.
However, according to my phone I was also at various times in New York (where the QM2 had come from) and Hamburg (where it was going to).
How do you get all this location history mumbo? Not seen this before, or at least didn't think it was publicly available... However, according to my phone I was also at various times in New York (where the QM2 had come from) and Hamburg (where it was going to).
karma mechanic said:
This one fits with that theory. On this day I was in Southampton, on board the Queen Mary 2. I also travelled around the Southampton area so there are a large number of perfectly correct locations.
However, according to my phone I was also at various times in New York (where the QM2 had come from) and Hamburg (where it was going to).
Excellent, that backs up my theory a bit!However, according to my phone I was also at various times in New York (where the QM2 had come from) and Hamburg (where it was going to).
ccr32 said:
How do you get all this location history mumbo? Not seen this before, or at least didn't think it was publicly available...
If you have an android phone you can get it herehttps://maps.google.co.uk/locationhistory/b/0
ccr32 said:
How do you get all this location history mumbo? Not seen this before, or at least didn't think it was publicly available...
It needs a Google account, so basically an Android phone. On the phone make sure 'Location history' is set on. It is inside the 'Location' settings area.Then login to your Google account in your browser at maps.google.com/locationhistory and it should all be there as soon as you've got some history.
I've managed to find a few more anomalous ones, so the list is:
Manchester
Marlborough
Martin Dales (Lincs)
Mexico City
Mumbai
Norwich
plus the New York and Hamburg ones that are almost certainly associated with hardware moving.
Odd that the others are quite close in the alphabet though - maybe some corruption of a database somewhere.
Manchester
Marlborough
Martin Dales (Lincs)
Mexico City
Mumbai
Norwich
plus the New York and Hamburg ones that are almost certainly associated with hardware moving.
Odd that the others are quite close in the alphabet though - maybe some corruption of a database somewhere.
I'd not seen this 'feature' before, thanks.
I wonder what google is doing with all this data? Darn sure that if I delete the data it'll only delete it from my view - google will retain it for eternity. I suspect even turning off location history will have a similar effect - google will still know where 'their' phone has been.
Interesting to see some of the waypoints it records - assume it's areas with poor network coverage and no wifi so it takes the nearest best guess.
I wonder what google is doing with all this data? Darn sure that if I delete the data it'll only delete it from my view - google will retain it for eternity. I suspect even turning off location history will have a similar effect - google will still know where 'their' phone has been.
Interesting to see some of the waypoints it records - assume it's areas with poor network coverage and no wifi so it takes the nearest best guess.
Mine seems to be pretty accurate. I played back last month when I was staying in Aberdeen at a hotel. It very specifically showed my trip in the morning, my visit to the coffee point, smoke shelter, when i went to lunch and when i went to a meeting in a conference room. I could play back the entire day and remember what I did.
Don't worry, your phone/google account has not been hacked.
I also have a Note 3 and it does this about once a month, usually reporting that I'm in Buenos Aires or one specific place in India which I can't even begin to pronounce. All of this whilst stood in the city centre of Inverness.
I'm wondering if there's a glitch with the GPS on the Note 3 as I've seen this on a couple, all on different networks.
I also have a Note 3 and it does this about once a month, usually reporting that I'm in Buenos Aires or one specific place in India which I can't even begin to pronounce. All of this whilst stood in the city centre of Inverness.
I'm wondering if there's a glitch with the GPS on the Note 3 as I've seen this on a couple, all on different networks.
Marc W said:
Lordy, I'm being tracked.Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff