- According to my phone
I am in the middle of Times Square in New York City.
This...this is not New York City!
Welcome to All Things Secured, my name's Josh.
While I understand the advantages
of having a GPS on our phones, I'm also keenly aware
that we are keeping a GPS tracking device
all day every day in our pockets.
Now, that tracking device can be used to figure out
where we live, where we work, our favorite coffee shops,
and as an ex-pat living overseas.
It's often used to restrict the websites, services,
and content that I can access.
And I find that very unfair and discriminatory.
So we're gonna talk about how to
hack into our phones GPS
and change things to our advantage.
Now there are a lot of great uses for this
but I also wanna talk about some of the risks involved.
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Let's go ahead inside
and show you how to change the GPS on your phone.
Let me be clear before we get started here.
I discourage people from Jailbreaking your iPhone
and that's not what we're gonna be doing here.
Apple has excellent built-in security features
and Jailbreaking your phone forfeits
all that security and exposes you to unnecessary risk
especially if you don't know what you're doing.
So instead of Jailbreaking, we're temporarily
altering the GPS settings.
A change that can easily be reversed either by
doing what I'm about to show you all over again,
or by simply restarting your iPhone.
So we're not making any permanent changes
to your phone here, don't worry.
Here's how it works.
I'm going to be using a software called iMyFone.
I haven't downloaded anything on my phone.
This is only going on to my computer.
And so I've connected my phone to my computer.
And now that I've started this
it's going to fetch my GPS location.
Now I am here in Thailand.
I'm gonna show you my phone simultaneously
so you can see what Google maps says as well.
It says that I am in Thailand.
And so we've matched that up
but let's say I wanna move over
to Times Square in New York City.
So I'm going into iMyFone.
I'm choosing Times Square, and then I'm gonna click move.
Now you notice immediately on my phone here on the right
it's going to redirect, it shows that I'm in New York City
and as far as any other app on my phone is concerned.
That is where I am.
And that's really interesting.
One of the things iMyFone can do is I can set way points.
And then you see I'm changing my speed
to let's say a brisk eight and a half kilometers an hour.
And I can start to move.
I can make it look like I'm actually walking down
the streets of New York.
And if you look to the right, it's very subtle
but I am moving down the streets of New York City
as far as my iPhone's concerned.
And of course, I'm still just sitting here.
So I'm gonna stop that.
And I can actually change the speed that I do that.
Let's say I make it wanna look like
I'm riding my bicycle down the streets of New York City,
or driving a car.
I can set that speed at which I'm doing any of this
to now 16 and a half kilometers.
And you'll notice that I'm starting
to go a little bit faster now on my phone.
All of this just gives me a lot of control
and I can stop that at any point that I want.
Up here on the upper right
I can set way points.
So it's not just one direction,
but I can go in many different directions.
I can teleport to any other place that I want
and I can access the historical records of where I've been
or save certain spots or routes that I wanna do
time and again.
And of course any time that I want to
undo all of this
I can just disconnect my phone, restart it,
and all of a sudden, I'm back to my regular GPS settings.
At the downside to doing this is
is that you need to physically
plug in your iPhone to your computer.
And if you're like me, you rarely do that anymore.
Heck I had to go dig around and find where my cable was.
So when might you use this feature?
Well for those who love location-based games
like Pokémon Go, this allows you to explore different areas
that weren't available to you before.
Honestly, I don't play these games.
I don't really like them.
It makes no difference to me
but apparently it's a big deal or at least it was.
And people like being able to find rare Pokémon
in other geographic locations.
For me, I've used this with certain streaming services
that require me to verify my location via GPS
in order to watch specific content.
In the past a VPN has usually worked just fine for this.
But like I just said,
some services are going that extra step
and checking the GPS location on my device
or at least requiring me to check in at my home location
every once in a while.
Now, when I have to do that now
I simply change my GPS location with this software
check in with the service provider
and then reset the location on my iPhone.
There are other instances
where I can see a need to fake my location
for those who might be tracking me.
And I realized that like most technology
this can be used both for good and bad purposes.
So I'm not advocating
that you use this to trick your wife into thinking
that you're in one place when you're actually in another.
But let's say that someone's in an abusive situation
and somebody's tracking their phone
as a means of controlling them.
Well, by all means fake your GPS data
and head to the nearest location to find help.
But I think that's a rare use case.
At least I hope it is.
More often than not I'm using this
just to access geo restricted services.
One last thing, you need to understand the risks involved
with using this kind of service minimal as they may be.
I spoke with an iMyFone representative who confirmed to me
that their company does collect limited data.
Including your device serial number,
the hardware you're using, the software you're using.
And of course your GPS location
Apple ensures that the app has its own sandbox.
So it doesn't have access
to all the other data on your iPhone.
However, I would caution that iMyFone is a Chinese company
which means that the Chinese government now,
or possibly in the future
will have backdoor access to any data they have.
It shouldn't be much, it shouldn't be identifiable
but that is a risk.
So what do you think, is there value
in changing your GPS data on your phone?
Let me know in the comments below
and you can help me a ton by hitting that like button
before you move on to the next video, stay safe.