I just wanted to add here that I am also still experiencing this bug, FP1U and Drei and living in Upper Austria.
Since about two days, the GPS Signal stopped to activate itself! It is the same as for my friend, we are living in different regions.
1 Like
nothing is solved.
this weekend is happening again, and here is why …
Sorry to intrude. Im italian and i frequently travel to Austria.
I dont own a fairphone but an ALPS S9920 with mediatek processor.
Since about 1 year when i roam in Austria with my TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile) sim
the GPS activates by itself.
After a lot of searching i found this is due to an illegally installed software by the producer,
the carrier IQ agent (look at wikipedia english and youll find detailed explanation).
I say illegally because I, as many, bought an Android phone to be sure nothing like
this could happen.
The CARRIER IQ company that was bought in 2015 by ATT, convinced the producers to
install this spy on many handphones, and also samsung and apple seem had it for some time.
CARRIER IQ then sold to the providers a software backend that collects data from the mobiles
connected to their network having this hook installed.
Of course me like many others, cant take away this gift we are given.
I find illegal the activation of this hook, because the providers know it was
installed illegally without any warning the end-users, and in any case there is no contract
that allows them to use my phone for their data collection or worse.
It is not clear what the software collects, someone said it can collect also the keypresses
on the keyboard of the mobile, for sure is able to activate when requested the gps and send
location information even if the user is unwilling to share the information
and disabled the entry in the setup.
It is a serious violation of the privacy made in austria for sure by 3 AT and T-Mobile.
I checked also with an austrian SIM of 3 AT and it does the same !!
In this way it discharges the battery in some hours and some could have maybe troubles
calling the emergency because of this.
From what i know and I check in Italy and Slovenia this never happend.
greetings
Were you able to detect the presence of CarrierIQ on your phone, or is your phone model somehow known to have CarrierIQ software installed?
People have looked in the FP1 for the software, but haven’t been able to find it (and there is root access, so it should be detectable and removable).
Also: Your post was duplicated, I’ve removed the oldest copy.
I haven’t found in this thread this information… someone tried to update to FP1 4.4 OS ? did it solve in this way?
The forum bug report has all the information:
https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp1-gps-activates-itself-when-mobile-data-connection-is-active-or-i-make-a-call/25541?source_topic_id=25418Short answer: It happens on #kitkat too. (Someone should probably file an issue in the new bugtracker.)
1 Like
Another small piece of information.
After all that, and also because of that, (gps auto activation in at) I changed
the mobile and I bought a Huawei.
I can confirm that 
- same SIM
- same contract
- same roaming providers (T-mobile and 3 AT)
in Austria the GPS does not activate by itself .
So, as 1+1=2, T-mobile and 3 AT in Austria illegally start the GPS
on mobiles with CARRIER IQ.
Until you can show that carrierIQ is actually present on your device, you’re actually claiming that 1+1=3.
Your observations are not surprising, given this is known to be an issue dependent on a combination of device and network. Changing either network or device will obviously solve the issue. So yes, the device is doing something that it shouldn’t in response to the network, but to then claim it must be carrierIQ is a very long stretch.
CarrierIQ is easily detectable, there’s a whole bunch of apps that can even automate that for you. On the Fairphone nobody has shown the presence of the software.
1 Like
Could be an explanation of the issue:
https://community.vodafone.com.au/t5/Android/GPS-turned-on-by-3g-connecting/m-p/411918#M30888
Austria, not Australia! 
okay, as it is not in use, i will try now to dig in the old phone
It is not the same country, that much is true. But the poster in the other forum mentioned the symptom has occurred for the first time when the network operator started to change frequencies to expand LTE 4G services. Some phones with MediaTek SoC seem to be affected. If frequency changes due to roaming (e.g. by travelling), probably that symptom might occur as well…
@Johannes : if necessary i will investigate more.
but, for the moment, this is what i found in the mobile Star s9920/mediatek
that under 3 AT was automatically turining on the GPS :
- in the system.img part of the OS it has 2 strings like this
x-carrieriq:avm.ctl
x-carrieriq:avm.ctl
unless someone knows that these were used in official android releases …
i let you guess the aftermaths …
i suggest people who own fairphones with gps problems to try the same
on a linux machine :
strings system.img
Fairphone 2 features a different (Qualcomm) SoC, and this problem is related to phones with a MediaTek SoC (Fairphone 1/1U).
But besides that, I strongly believe it has something to do with a fallback feature from Drei named “National Roaming” which offers 2G from their business partner T-Mobile for certain areas where Drei 3G services are not available yet. Some users reported GPS stays off after they disabled roaming to 2G completely. I would recommend to do the same and see if it helps…
To improve their network infrastructure, maybe Drei is using Carrier IQ to get “anonymized metrics data” (quote from Dan Rosenberg) which contains the respective GPS position information when phones switch from 3G to 2G and back again. That seems quite logical to me, after I read several articles how Carrier IQ is developed and meant to work:
BTW, if you experience Carrier IQ on your phone, that does not necessarily mean it was implemented by the manufacturer of the device.
Ok, here goes.
- Grabbed FP1 system images from here.
- Grabbed simg2sim from here and compiled it.
unzip FP1-Fairphone_OS_v1_8_7_Image_2015081400.zipsimg2sim system.img system.rawmkdir mntimg && mount -o loop system.raw ./mntimggrep -r carrieriq ./mntimg/
This gets me two suspect files:
Binary file framework/framework.odex matches Binary file framework/telephony-common.odex matches
Seeing as context is everything, we get some of it using strings mntimg/framework/framework.odex | grep -A20 -B3 carrieriq (where I’ve limited output to similar values preceding it, and the 20 values following it):
x-3gpp2:lcs.ua x-3gpp:mbms.download.delivery.ua ``#``x-3gpp:mbms.service.announcement.ua x-carrieriq:avm.ctl x-cibenix:odp.ua x-essoy-application:push.erace x-hide-urls-from-log x-hutchison:ad.ua x-hutchison:al.ua x-hutchison:il.ua x-microsoft:drm.license x-microsoft:drm.meter x-microsoft:playready.drm ``#``x-microsoft:playready.drm.initiator x-motorola:browser.ua x-motorola:location.ua x-motorola:now.ua x-motorola:otaprov.ua x-motorola:splash.ua x-oma-application:bcast.ua x-oma-application:cpm:ua x-oma-application:dlota.ua x-oma-application:dpe.ua x-oma-application:java-ams
Which looks like a table of open mobile alliance push application IDs - judging by the list, carrieriq apparently registered an ID. Results for the other file are the same. I’d conclude that the system image contains two copies of the tables of push messsage types. As such, I don’t see it as an indication that carrieriq software is included in the system images.
2 Likes
Well , i came again to austria this weekend, and i brought my old mobile
to debug what was going on.
Surprise … it connected to T-Mobile and …
nothing happens. GPS is not activated at all.
Is this maybe the result of the eu no-roaming
rule from 15 june ?
Were you moving the phone for some kilometers while it was switched on?
It occurred for me again a couple of times in July while I was having a Danish Sim Card in my phone together with my Austrian. This time not constantly as it did when it first happened and I don’t think it has occurred since I took it out again.