Tracking and privacy

Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location data. While the phone is turned on, the geographical location of a mobile phone can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.
The movements of a mobile phone user can be tracked by their service provider and, if desired, by law enforcement agencies and their government. Both the SIM card and the handset can be tracked.
China has proposed using this technology to track commuting patterns of Beijing city residents. In the UK and US, law enforcement and intelligence services use mobiles to perform surveillance. They possess technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely in order to listen to conversations that take place near the phone.
Thefts

According to the Federal Communications Commission, one out of three robberies involved the theft of a cellular phone. Police data in San Francisco showed that one-half of all robberies in 2012 were thefts of cellular phones. An online petition on Change.org called Secure our Smartphones urged smartphone manuacturers to install kill switches in their devices to make them unusable in case of theft. The petition is part of a joint effort by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and was directed to the CEOs of the major smartphone manufacturers and telecommunication carriers. 

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