Is there a foolproof way of detecting whether a user is faking his/her GPS location?
The technique should work on android devices with no cellular connectivity hardware. i.e. Wi-Fi only
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2How does one fake their GPS location? – Oliver Charlesworth May 27 '13 at 11:40
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1for example with the fake Gps app, it can be downloaded from the play store – Analizer May 27 '13 at 11:42
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I think u mean that some apps uses "ALLOW MICK LOCATIONS" feature on phone to provide fake gps location to all other apps accessing GPS location? – Neo May 27 '13 at 12:21
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I think you should make the concept of fake GPS coordinate cleaner because by itself any coordinate can be considered genuine whether the user is actually there or not.
You could therefore act in two ways:
- pull from some other source any information regarding position which you can compare with the GPS coordinates
- analyze the data you have (the GPS coordinates) for discrepancies.
As it concerns solution 1 you could for instance use the CID (cell id ) and LAC (location area code) of the GSM signal nearest tower to find out whether a user is in a certain area. That would require an internet connection and a request to a remote service for the LAC to GPS coordinates translation.
As for solution 2 you might check for abnormal coordinates changes which are not in line with the user speed or acceleration, for instance a change of several miles in few seconds could warn you about a spoofed coordinate.
dendini
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Thanks, I was thinking on similar lines but the CELL ID part works only on devices with cellular connectivity. That is what I had mentioned in the question details. – Dojo May 27 '13 at 12:45