Tracking Mobile Phone From Personal Laptop

What You Will Learn

How Android location permissions work
How to build a simple Android app that reports its GPS location
How to receive that location on a laptop over a network
Why understanding this is important for mobile security assessments

What Is It?

This is a hands-on project: build a simple Android application that tracks GPS location and sends coordinates to a laptop on the same network. This simulates what spyware and stalkerware do — understanding how it works helps you identify and protect against it.

Why It Matters

Mobile tracking is used in parental controls, fleet management, and — maliciously — in stalkerware. As a security professional, you need to understand:

What permissions a malicious app would request
How location data is transmitted
How to detect such apps on a device

Key Concepts

Android Permissions

Android requires apps to explicitly declare the permissions they need in AndroidManifest.xml. Location is a dangerous permission — the user must grant it at runtime.

Hands-On

Building the Android Application

Required Permissions

Permission to get the user’s precise GPS location:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION" />

Permission to access the user’s location while the app is running in the background:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION" />

To enable persistence — start the app after device reboot:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED" />

Permission to access the internet (needed to send location data to your laptop):

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />

Storing Server Configuration (Shared Preferences)

One of the ways Android allows you to save app data is through Shared Preferences — a key-value pair storage that is usually used to store user-specified configuration details such as settings. In our case, we store the IP and port supplied by the user so that upon restart they won’t have to input them again.

SharedPreferences prefs = getSharedPreferences("config", MODE_PRIVATE);
SharedPreferences.Editor editor = prefs.edit();
editor.putString("server_ip", ipAddress);
editor.putInt("server_port", port);
editor.apply();

Reading Location Using FusedLocationProviderClient

FusedLocationProviderClient fusedClient =
    LocationServices.getFusedLocationProviderClient(this);

fusedClient.getLastLocation().addOnSuccessListener(location -> {
    if (location != null) {
        double lat = location.getLatitude();
        double lon = location.getLongitude();
        sendToServer(lat, lon);
    }
});

Receiving on Laptop (Python)

On your laptop, run a simple TCP listener to receive coordinates:

import socket

server = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
server.bind(("0.0.0.0", 9999))
server.listen(1)
print("[*] Listening for connections...")

conn, addr = server.accept()
print(f"[*] Connection from {addr}")

while True:
    data = conn.recv(1024)
    if not data:
        break
    print(f"[Location] {data.decode()}")

conn.close()

Security Implications

Real-world stalkerware often:

Hides its icon after installation
Requests RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED to survive reboots
Uses background services to continuously report location
Requests ACCESS_BACKGROUND_LOCATION to track even when the screen is off

How to Detect Tracking Apps on Android

Go to Settings → Apps and look for apps without icons or names.
Check Settings → Privacy → Permission Manager → Location to see which apps have location access.
Review Settings → Battery → Battery Usage — background tracking apps consume unusual battery.