FakeTraveler: Fake where your phone is located (Mock location for Android)

This doesn’t work anymore because since android 9 or so, there is an api feature that allows any app to query if mock location is enabled. You need to be rooted to disable that “feature.”

I use it to gamify (not games or such -) a lot of things, but it’s also used for “fraud” or such, one thing when I was researching was that Pokémon go users do this. I just do it for geoarbritage pricing - without a play account on google phones. IMO I don’t think google play follows geographic pricing like apple does with their store (address/credit card in other geographic region)

Coincidentally it’s harder to do the above on an iPhone.

Afaik nearby wifi networks are also used to determine location. As long as you have wifi activated Google can use this to determine where you are. I don't know if they use this as a hard check.

The only way I can think of to prevent this is to build a faraday cage with a wired vpn router and your phone inside.

When I was a teenager and wanted to go do boyish teenager things, like hang out at $ABANDONED_BUILDING, I used such apps to mock my location to the library, as my parents were tracking it using Life360.

Reminds me of the old FakeOperator for iOS from back in the day, where instead of it saying Sprint or Verizon you could make it say "CIA", "FBI", or even "Hacker" the joys of smartphone hacking.

"Lockito – GPS itinerary faker" [0] is my go-to app when I need to test location features on Android.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fr.dvilleneuve...

I chose a location, opened maps.app and it seems to 'think' the phone is at the new location.

But

Why does doordash still know PRECISELY where the phone is? I turned off location permission for it, 'force stop'd it and then relaunched and reenabled precise, always ON Location sharing.

Shouldn't the app be fooled?

What gives?

I’m working on something similar for IOS by running MITM & spoofing the response from wloc (API used to determine location based on Wii routers and cell towers). I was surprised that GPS is rarely ever used and almost always substituted by APIs that expose your location to Apple/Google even if VPN is on

This type of tool got me banned from Pokeman Go... gotta' collect them all!!

I built a small ESP based device which collected Wifi data (mac addresses) enough to use the Google API and plot its course on a map after the event.

It struck me it wouldn't be too hard to use the same device to replay the WiFi data back to the phone to make it think you were on that journey. It would also require shielding to avoid access to GPS and to the real WiFi access points around. Eminently doable though I would think.

Does this fool the android app store regarding current country, or is that based off who is currently providing Mobile phone signal?

There's a bunch of commercial apps to do the same for iPhone, but they all feel incredibly scammy (though I've tested a few, and they work fine). I'd love to find an open source option, or even a pointer to the requisite APIs.

I'd be more interested to learn about how certain apps can detect gps faking, despite these apps trying their best to evade them.

This doesn't work, gmaps shows my actual location.

There are tens, if not hundreds of mock location provider apps available on Google Play and that feature has been supported on Android since Android 1.5 from 16 years ago. Just curious, why is this app, specifically, any different?