Key point: The Interior Ministry confirms a significant decline in the use of stealth pings for cell tower queries.
Germany’s Interior Ministry has published official figures on the use of stealth pings for the first time in several years, signaling a reduction in this location tracking method. The transparency initiative comes after years of political silence on the surveillance technology.
Stealth pings are silent location SMS messages deployed by authorities to determine the position of mobile devices without the user’s knowledge. In Germany, this technology is subject to strict legal requirements as a telecommunications surveillance measure and requires a court order.
The Interior Ministry had for years refrained from commenting on the frequency and scope of stealth ping deployment. With the now-published statistics, the agency breaks its previous information vacuum and provides an overview of actual usage. According to the data, the number of these queries has declined significantly.
For compliance and regulatory professionals, this development is relevant as it demonstrates that German security authorities have adapted their practices with one of the most controversial surveillance methods. This may have implications for the assessment of data protection and security measures in companies, particularly for operators of critical infrastructure and telecommunications networks that must process these requests.
Source: www.heise.de · Published June 27, 2026
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