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How are they doing this - Facebook - experts please?
Brief details - someone is using Facebook via a mobile (or other handheld mobile device) with internet connection. They are leaving messages for people and they are somehow able to hide the fact that they are using a mobile phone (normally shows up with the mobile icon when a mobile is used). When you try to track the I.P. they are using, this appears to be masked or hidden OR is showing up as multiple locations within the UK, ranging from London to Leicester, Coventry, Lincoln - well, you get the picture.
So, how are the able to do this? Bear in mind, I am not a technical whizz kid or techno nerd and am simply asking the question and there is good reason for wanting to know the answer.
I should add that the person doing this is making accusations against other people (not me) and all attempts to find out who it is, have failed - so far.
2 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
The mobile phone icon probably only shows up if they use a mobile phone web browser or the Facebook app for their phone. If they use a desktop web browser (e.g. by connecting a laptop to the phone) it will probably show up as non-mobile. If they use a non-standard browser on their phone, it will probably show up as non-mobile. And if they change the user agent identity string that their browser sends to the server when it accesses Facebook, they could make Facebook think they are using any browser at all and have themselves show up as mobile or non-mobile at whim.
I don't understand what you are saying about tracking their IP. You cannot find out what their IP address is unless you either ask Facebook to tell it to you, break into Facebook's systems, or plant a web-bug on a Facebook page you know they will access.
If you have their IP address, it won't tell you much on its own. Contrary to popular belief, most people in the UK don't have a single, unchanging IP address; it changes when they reboot their home router, or re-connect their phone or modem to the internet. Mobile phones don't usually even have the luxury of a globally-unique address. They are normally bunched together, sharing a limited supply of addresses with other phones.
And IP addresses don't carry location information. The only way to link an IP address to a location is to rely on a third party, who may or may not have an accurate and up-to-date database that links IP addresses to physical locations. When you realise that most IP addresses are changing location all the time, you can see how futile this is for anything more than determining which country somebody is in.
The only way to positively identify someone from an IP address is to find out who the registered owner of the IP address is using a "whois" query (the address is usually owned by an ISP) and then get a court order asking the owner of the address to reveal from their logs which customer was given that address at a particular date and time. Even then, the address might have been used by more than one person at a time for various reasons (especially if it was used for a mobile phone).
- payne747Lv 51 decade ago
Firstly, how do you even know they are using a mobile? Secondly, where did you even get their IP from?
