@will13am wrote:
@Sienna123 , have you lost your phone and need to know where it is? It is an unusual request, I would imagine the system would have data on what tower your phone was last connected to. The data not granular enough to locate it. What type of phone do you have? Phones these days can have a locator app that will be more useful for what you want to do. I am not a iOS user so can't help there. For android devices, if you have find my device installed on the phone, you would be able to locate it quite precisely.
The data is granular enough to locate an active phone within a few meters, lol, with even greater precision if multiple overlapping signals can be triangulated, GPS or WiFi is active, etc.
The barriers for operators and for consumers are not technical, they're legal. The network or an agency (like the police) could access the logs, figure out where the phone was last active, see where it's active now. But they won't do it without very good reason (the sort of reason which would compel a signed court warrant). Tracking a known criminal, locating an abducted victim, rescuing a missing hiker, or responding to a 911 emergency would likely be good enough reasons. Finding another lost (or stolen) phone is not.
"Find my iPhone" is a wonderful app for this purpose. But the downside is that it has to be enabled before the device is lost, and many people don't know they should activate it manually or they specifically don't want it actively tracking their phone's locations and movements all the time (only when they can't find their lost phones, of course).
The proper thing to do is to login Self-Serve and click the "Report Lost or Stolen Phone" button. This immediately disables non-Emergency access to the network. Also change your Self-Serve password - change every password for every login you ever used on the device - damage control just in case it was indeed found or stolen by someone opportunistic. If a new "owner" of your device has access to your phone number, emails, logins, social media, banking, etc - and changes the passwords before you do - then things can become very problematic for you.
