The locator map for my Anti-Theft is showing that I have been to France, the UK, some other places in Europe and also in south India. I live in Ohio, USA.
Why is the locator map showing that my phone is in all of these different places when I’ve not even left my home since last week, before I activated this phone?
Could it be when I shut off my GPS on my phone (to save battery life)? If so, what is it picking up besides my phone that shows I’m in another part of the world?
Also, I’m guessing that the phone icon on the map represents where I am now? And, what do the red stars represent, where I’ve been? There’s no key for the map, so it’s not easily understood.
Hi,
we heard about this before, it could be the problem with US format of GPS or Google maps (there were some updates); could you please try to connect to wifi a localise the device again?
Shutting GPS will have no such effect, becuase antitheft will try (in some situations) to turn it on; when it is not possible, 3G signal, triangulation or wifi AP inforamtion are used for localisation.
Phone icon is indicating the last known position, so yes, technically it shows your present location. Red dots are presenting the places where the device was localised in past. You can set it directly on the map, what do you want to see.
I had tried to respond to this the other day, but kept getting an error that the ‘socket would not connect’ when posting my reply.
I turned the GPS back on on my phone and I can see myself on Google Maps and it’s now in the right place. Actually, it even has me in the exact location of where I am in my house. And, now the Locator Map is correct again. But, before I turned on the GPS, it was telling on the Locator Map, that I was still in India:
LG-LS855
Date: Fri Dec 14 21:52:27 CET 2012
Latitude: 10°35’39.618"W
Longitude: 77°0’48.761"N
Accuracy: 4048m
I just shut off using the GPS satellite to track me and only use Wi-Fi and then used the Command on the Avast! web site to locate my phone and although the location is almost 150 feet off of my exact location, it at least has me within my property, not in another country.
So, it seems that something goes a little buggy when I turn the GPS off on my phone (to save on battery life).
And, as far as I know, my phone updates all of its apps on its own (Google Maps), so I double-checked and yes, my maps have updated and so is all of my Avast!
If Avast! is requesting my GPS location once an hour, then it is using the GPS on my phone, correct? If it’s using the GPS on my phone, then it is is using the battery. The LG Marquee is known to have poor battery life and many places on the web state to disable GPS if you are trying to save battery life, which is why I did. I guess I really don’t need to have it tracking my phone unless it’s lost/stolen, so I’ll shut that off.
Jan Svehlak (above) has mentioned in other threads that GPS can drain battery life. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=91094.0
…and also mentioned in this present thread that shutting off the GPS has no effect on the GPS coordinates, “Shutting GPS will have no such effect, becuase antitheft will try (in some situations) to turn it on; when it is not possible, 3G signal, triangulation or wifi AP inforamtion are used for localisation.” It seems to me that it doesn’t work correctly when I shut off GPS though.
Of course, if GPS location is queried it will drain battery. But Anti-Theft does not do this by itself, you have to request that.
If GPS is turned off, we try other ways on querying the location. But sometimes this is simply not possible (e.g. if we try to track by WIFI access point ID, we need a mapping from ID to location and if the access point is not present in the Google database we can not find it).
Hi UTAlice,
Please understand that turn on GPS does NOT drain battery. It just drain battery in case GPS is WORKING, such as you request location commands from avast! antitheft, or tracking your location via Google Maps, etc.
If you turn off GPS, the location is NOT accurate, of course.
So, you can turn on GPS usually with no worry about battery.
Regards,
Binh
