ARE PAGERS ABLE TO BE TRACKED?

One of the commonly asked questions in this age of the Covid-19 pandemic is "Can pagers be tracked?"

People are very concerned about invasion of privacy and with smartphones having GPS, Triangulation and Tracing Apps automatically installed it is a very valid concern.

1-way pagers cannot be tracked. There is no GPS. Remember this is technology from the 1980's. That's 40+ years ago.

There is no way to find the location of a 1-way pager. Period.

A 1-way pager does not transmit a signal, it only receives a signal. It's like a transistor radio. No GPS, No apps...just a radio receiver. There is no triangulation of the signal the way cellphone towers work. When a page is sent, every transmitter in the pager's coverage area is lit up and unlike a cellular network, a 1-way pager does not communicate back and forth with the paging transmitters.

Now with that said, it is possible that with the right scanning equipment, someone could pick up what is being transmitted to a pager. They wouldn't know which pager, but any traffic over the airwaves could be scanned. There are youtube videos on this exact subject.

In most cases, that's simply a phone number or a short word message and would do the person intercepting this information no good. If you are really concerned, simply don't have anyone send you personal information in the form of an emailed alphanumeric word message and you should be fine or choose an Encrypted Alphanumeric Pager such as the Sun Telecom T5 pager and that will solve the issue.