PHONE NUMBER ➤ LOCATION

Contribution by Bob Engelen, November 20, 2022

How to get the GAIA ID and location

from only one’s phone number. A new
Google leak.
INTRODUCTION
I have made another discovery, which to my knowledge has not been shared by anyone else before.

If you log in to your Google account with a phone number and you have forgotten the password, you can, via
password recovery, retrieve the name of your phone and also find your GAIA ID.

With the GAIA ID, you can view your reviews and possibly these reviews lead to your location. Maybe you use
your real name in those reviews that can lead to a social media account. A tool like GHunt can be useful for
retrieving all kinds of info with just the GAIA ID.

But Google also reveals the name you have given to your phone. I used an old number on the test which is
not valid anymore, but still with just the phone name Google revealed and using Wigle I was able to locate
my own phone. Not so good actually.

In the next section, I'll explain the steps to go through to find out the GAIA ID and phone name if you only
have a phone number.

Be aware that if you try to login with a phone number of someone else that the person will receive a
notification on his phone unless his phone is turned off.

I also explain how I could trace my phone on Wigle and how to get the reviews via the GAIA ID that perhaps
lead to the place of residence.

As a bonus, I've made a flowchart with all kinds of other ways to find out the location if only the phone
number is known.

1
STEP 1) Go to accounts.google.com

Make sure you are not logged in. I used Firefox in

private mode. Go to accounts.google.com and you
will automatically be taken to the login screen.

Enter the number you are looking for. If necessary,

use the international number format like for
example +31612345678.

And then click on "next"

STEP 2) Forget my password

Do not enter anything here, but click directly on
"forgot password"

2
STEP 3) Try another way
Depending on the settings associated with this
phone number, Google will try to help you recover
the password. If a second email address is
provided, Google will suggest you to send a
verification via email. That's not what we want so I
click "try another way"

Google may then offer you another option, such as sending the verification code to a second phone
number. In that case you always click on "try another way" Eventually you will see the screen as below on
the le or below on the right. Do you see the name of my phone “Nokia 8”.
Like I mentioned before. If you try this with somebody elseʼs phone number, that person will receive a
notification unless his phone is turned off.

3
STEP 4) View the source code
Once you see one of both screens then right click anywhere on that page and choose the option "View
Page Source"

You will see something like below. The GAIA ID is on the first line, but you have to scroll a little to the right
before it is visible.

There it is. I have the GAIA ID underlined in red. Pretty awesome, donʼt you think.

4
STEP 5) Check the reviews
The GAIA ID is 100034770426361807927.

Now I will create a URL similar to

https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/1XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/reviews/@ where I replace
1XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX with the GAIA ID.

So at the end you get https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/100034770426361807927/reviews/

When you click on the link you end up with the page below. You not only see the name belonging to the
phone number but also see the reviews this person ( Maria van den Berg) did. All reviews are done in
Nieuw-Vennep, a place near Airport Schiphol.

5
STEP 6) Search the phone on Wigle
I have created an account on Wigle.net and use the advanced search to get better results.

As "SSID" I enter the name of my phone. In this case it's "Nokia 8" and I'm filling in the latitude- and
longitude range.

There were 11 results on Wigle in the area around Nieuw-Vennep . On top of the list you see my phone
catched when I was at Microso in Schiphol. At that moment I used my phone as a hotspot.

6
Conclusion:
If you want to find out the location of someone else's phone then it is possible, but there are
consequences that the person will receive a notification if he is the one that wants to reset his password.

Thankyou for reading!

Please follow me on linkedin if you like my osint contributions and want to be updated in the future.

As of January 1, I will quit my last company in order to finally realize my dream and find a job in the field
of open source intelligence. Do you have an open position in that field or know a company that has one,
then I would like to get in touch with you.

Bonus
Check the extensive phone2location flow chart on the next pages.