Using Samsung Mobile Tracker on Galaxy S in any country.

If you’ve tried to activate the Samsung Mobile Tracker on your Samsung Galaxy S I9000, you’ve undoubtedly encountered numerous pointless error messages like ‘SSO_2012’ or ‘For legal reasons, this function not in service in some countries.’. I, for one, am sick and tired of living in a ‘technological 3rd world country’ that always gets the short end of the stick for anything on the World Wide Web and since moving is not an option for me, I decided to figure out a procedure to set up and use Mobile Tracker despite the arbitrary limitations.

First things first: I’ve only tested this on Froyo 2.2 and you will need a rooted phone to pull this off. The usual disclaimers apply. (I’m not buying you a new phone if you break yours, you may get sued into oblivion by Samsung, cause the destruction of the entire universe … or worse. You’ve been warned.)

1. Signing up for an account.

This needs to be done from ‘Location and Security’ menu on the device, but typically will be met with an error message like ‘SSO_2010’. To fix that, root your device, download the MarketEnabler application (just google it) and use it to fake another provider (like ‘T-Mobile US’). Signup should work fine with that.

2. Triggering a location update request.

With the account you created in step 1, you can log into samsungdive.com. Sadly, when trying to use the ‘locate’ feature, you may get another error message stating that this is not allowed in your country ‘for legal reasons’. (I can’t fathom a legal reason that would prevent me from requesting the location of my own phone, but that is what it says.)

To fix this, log into the Samsung Dive site and go to the Mobile tracker. Once there, access the following URL while replacing ‘YOURPASSWORD’ with your account password to trigger a location update request:

http://www.samsungdive.com/locationN/forwardLocationRequest.do?password=YOURPASSWORD

That page will return gibberish which your browser probably won’t like. Just ignore it and go back to the Mobile tracker page, where your request will be pending or have completed in the meantime.

3. Issuing a remote lock command.

If you want to issue a remote lock for your device, use this URL:

http://www.samsungdive.com/lockN/forwardRemoteLockResult.do?password=YOURPASSWORD&currentReqId=REQUESTID

YOURPASSWORD = your account password
REQUESTID, PHYSADDRESS and USERID can be extracted from the source code of the mobile tracker page. You will see something like this in there:

//remote lock
var lockCurrentUserId = “USERID”;
var lockCurrentRequestId =”REQUESTID”;
var lockCurrentRequestStat = “2800”;
var lockCurrentRequestStatMsg = “Operation Success”;
var lockCurrentDevicePhysicalAddress = “IMEI:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”;

It is likely that USERID and PHYSADDRESS are static, REQUESTID changes over time (either on login or even for every request).

4. Issuing a remote wipe command.

To issue a remote wipe, use this URL while substituting YOURPASSWORD with your account password:

http://www.samsungdive.com/wipeN/forwardRemoteWipeResult.do?password=YOURPASSWORD

Note that I have not checked this functionality because I did not really want to wipe my device. If you tried it, please let me know in the comments if this works or not.

In conclusion, there is really no reason why these services are not enabled or allowed for people in countries other than the US. I know numerous other products that offer similar functionality without any issue. That said, Samsung can probably close the loopholes listed above very easily but until they do, enjoy the full functionality of your phone.

Update: While writing this, I noticed that the Remote Lock and Remote Wipe features are now also blocked. These used to work regardless of country, with only the Locator feature being blocked but apparently Samsung decided to further restrict functionality to their users. I have added the URLs to use for the lock and wipe commands as well. YMMV.
Update 2010-12-19: Apparently the Remote Lock URL changed again so I’ve updated this post.