Android 15 will allow you to stop reporting your location to your mobile network operator

Android 15 promises to make it more difficult to find out the location of devices using the mobile network signal.

The story in the movies, with mobile phones that can be located in seconds using the mobile network, is not far from the truth. Telephone service operators can even locate in real time any phone connected to their network, not by triangulating the signal transmitted to GSM relays, but directly using the coordinates sent by the phone.

Reporting the location of devices is not entirely pointless, as the information helps the telephone network improve signal stability by connecting user terminals to nearby relays.

Starting with Android 15, you’ll be able to turn off this behavior in the same way you turn off permissions for apps that request your location.

However, there are some technical aspects that make this change inconvenient, as the protocols for connecting to mobile networks are designed without the notion of hiding the location of devices, in the idea that such a requirement could not be fully met with radio wave technology anyway. For example, when an application requests your location, the Android system asks for your consent, and in case of refusal, it will simply block this information. But in the case of devices connected by radio waves, the signal to the network is, in principle, the only reference needed to find the location using suitable technical means. Google can still tell your phone to stop reporting your location “in the clear” through your cellular modem, except in what could be an emergency (eg when an accident is detected). Of course, the notion of “emergency” is also applicable from the opposite direction, the operator of the mobile phone network being able to request the disclosure of the location as an emergency. In other words, the new Android 15 setting will only protect you from “spying” for relatively harmless purposes (eg profiling for advertising purposes), not from government agencies that really want to track you down.

The new setting could help protect against so-called “Stingrays,” devices specifically designed to facilitate the precise location of nearby suspects’ phones. Or maybe they just need to get an update to be able to bypass the prepared restrictions.