Stalking has become a major issue in the U.S., with one 2024 study noting that some 13.5 million people are stalked each year and that about one in three women and one in six men will experience stalking at some point in their lifetime (See the report from the Domestic Violence Services Network, Inc.). Unfortunately, technology has provided these malevolent individuals with a valuable tool to keep tabs on their targets: cellular GPS tracking devices. The small, widely available devices, which can be purchased for as little as $30.00, are easily placed under a bumper or in a glovebox. Furthermore, as they are not linked to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth networks, these trackers are much harder to locate and remove, and can go undetected for months.

Now, thanks to a research initiative led by NYU Tandon Ph.D. student Moshe Satt, stalking victims may soon have an accurate and easy to use tool with which to fight back. Working with his advisor, Assistant Professor Danny Huang, Satt conducted one of the first investigations into the detection of clandestine cellular devices and strategies to reveal them. As he told reporter Tim McNicolas of CBS News New York in an interview broadcast on television after the Tony awards in June, by employing a TinySA, a $150 palm-sized spectrum analyzer used by amateur radio enthusiasts, and developing an innovative algorithm designed for effective uplink frequency analysis, Satt and his team have been able to produce a system that can consistently detect the presence of these bugs within a three-foot range.

The design and implementation of Satt’s tool is documented in “You Can Drive But You Cannot Hide,” a paper he presented in August at the 3rd USENIX Symposium on Vehicle Security and Privacy . The report notes that the algorithm developed by the team enabled them to reliably detect tracker signals sent to nearby cell towers. In doing so, the researchers, who also included NYU Tandon postdoc Donghan Hu and Ph.D. candidate Patrick Zielinski, were able to determine which frequencies to scan, and thus successfully interpret results and filter out false positives.  

The next step for the team is to find an easy-to-use way for stalking victims to detect these same signals, without needing to pick up their own spectrum analyzer. Satt envisions, “an app “or something that will Bluetooth to their phone, that will talk to a device like this [spectrum analyzer] and say, with a high degree of probability, that you have a tracker with you.”

In commenting on the significance of this new defensive strategy, Huang observed, “The tech industry has created many tools that can be repurposed for cyberstalking but has invested far less in technologies that protect privacy. We believe this innovation has the potential to significantly empower victims of domestic abuse by providing them with a readily accessible way to regain their privacy and safety.”

You can read the paper at https://hdanny.org/static/vehiclesec25-final9.pdf.