Alexander - Tracer

Sometimes, you can follow me quite closely. In real-time. 🔍

You could easily find me anyway. Websites like Ratsit, Hitta.se, Mrkoll and Eniro make it difficult to hide away in Sweden. 🇸🇪

But monitoring someone live is a whole new level. 🕵️ Remember the famous slogan "Big Brother is watching you"? 👁️

However, if you were expecting to perform surveillance on me round-the-clock, I might dissappoint you. Sorry. 😞

This tracer is a side-effect of my curiosity (and boredom). Some time ago I noticed that my mobile was behaving strangely on my way home. It was always happening in the particular area in Gothenburg, Sweden. I just wanted to understand why. 🤷‍♂️

You can read more details about the whole story and even look at some interesting pictures here. (The post is in Swedish but the automatic translation is quite accurate.)

I used Kotlin to make a small Android app that can send some diagnostic info and GPS coordinates to the server. The server is a simple Python script that can store time series data in InfluxDB. The data can then be shown in the Grafana dashboard.

However, the dashboard that I am sharing now is more simplified. I do not dare to show any data that could potentially be sensitive (e.g. cell ID, tracking area code). But sharing GPS positions and basic quality metrics will not harm anyone. 😌

Dashboard

So, you can indeed follow me live, trace my location and see some signal characteristics in real time. But only when I choose to activate data reporting in the app. Which happens quite seldom. 🤭

Disclaimer and some more thoughts:

Have you become curious about your mobile signal quality? Congratulations! 🎉

Just be aware about the security risks involved when using third-party apps. 📱

It is that simple: Your mobile, your responsibility. Use your common sense. ☝️

One popular Android app that shows info about mobile networks is NetMonster. 📶

You can ask your favourite search engine about it and then make your own judgement.

But if you are curious about my app and really want to try it, you need to be aware of five things:

My app was done in just a few weeks. Not much debugging or testing. It is still quite unstable.
It needs permissions for location, phone and internet access to be able to work properly.
"Reporting" means the actual sending of GPS positions and connection data to my server.
It sends less often when the app is in the background or idle. "Keep the screen on" might help.
While "Keep the screen on" might help, it can also cause the battery to discharge quicker. 🔋

If you are feeling brave and still want to try my app, it is here.

I have called the app "Green Eye" since it has (a bit) to do with surveillance. 🙂

If you want, I can make a similar dashboard for you as well. Just let me know. 😉

Alexander – Tracer

Sometimes, you can follow me quite closely. In real-time. 🔍