So I'm GM that's rather green to SR 4E totally confused with regard to traces, and tracking.

Our hacker and me want to work out the following:

A) Is it possible to find people physically via, as in their actual location, and not just their PAN/Persona. Is this possible? We are debating things like satellite tracking, triangulation of commcode signal and the like. Perhaps you'd need actual access to sattellite/triangulation sensors etc. nodes to pull it off or people would be offing hackers left and righ. Even a Stealth prog isn't enough to keep a good hacker from doing it where possible.

B) Can you locate someone's node/PAN if you possess their commcode and have received a call from them?

C) If A and/or B are possible, what factors must be in place? Can you only track someone when, say, they're calling you? Or their commlink is active? Or do you have to meet with their persona (and then they'd know it, probably), or something fourth entirely?

Please help me, this is bugging us greatly.

From SR4A:



So what does that mean for you?

A) Yes, you can trace any icon you can see in the Matrix back to it's source, and learn the physical location of that node.

B) There's an important distinction here between a commcode and an access ID. Your commcode is like your phone number or e-mail address, where your access ID is more like your passport number- it gets checked and logged every time you go to a new node, so anyone with your access ID can see what you've been up to online. This is why most people spoof their access ID, so as to have a clean record, or they simply get an anonymous commcode or a one-use commcode, so that when they make calls and do things online, people can't find their real access ID easily. Once you have a person's access ID, you can see their entire datatrail, but you don't even need that for a Trace; all you need is to see their icon. So you could trace somebody you met in a chatroom, for example.

C) See above.

I've read it, but it doesn't address the thing that's bugging me most: When is this applicable?

What exactly constitutes an icon? Do you have to meet someone in the matrix to trace them (using the term icon seems to indicate this). Can it only happen as long as the commlink is in active mode? And, as this particular case is an attempt to catch a technomancer, how does it work with them?

Literally all that's needed for a Trace is that you see an icon (IC program, user, a file even) in a node. You can be in AR, coldsim, hot sim, whatever for this, but you *must* see their icon. After that, you can run a trace on that icon.

If you're trying to catch a technomancer, you would first need to find his icon in a node somewhere. If he's hiding, like a good technomancer should, this means you'll need to beat his Stealth program to even find him in a node at all. Assuming you've done that, or if he simply isn't running a Stealth program, you'll see his icon and from there you can run a Track program to Trace his persona back to its originating node (in this case, the biological node all Technomancers possess). Again, if he's running Stealth, you subtract the rating of his stealth complex form from your Trace User dicepool. It's a simple Extended Test, so once you have 10 hits, you find him. That means you'll have his access ID and his physical location to within 50 meters.

Someone has their Icon present in any node that they're subscribed to.

So in order to start a trace on someone on the Matrix, you need to find their Icon first, which might mean tracking down a Node that they are on. So for example, if a Hacker hangs out in a virtual chat room, you could find him there. If he's playing a multi-player Matrix game, his Icon will be there. If you're tracking down a Renraku wage slave, his Icon could be on one of the Renraku employee nodes.

Think of it sort of like how you'd want to trace someone online in present day. If you wanted to find me, you'd need me to go to a certain website that you could monitor. Then you could trace my connection from there. You can either use some bit of social engineering to get me to go to a website you control (Hey check out these stock picks!) or you could do some social engineering to find out what my favorite websites are, and keep an eye on those websites. When I log in, start tracing.

That's sort of how Nodes on the Matrix work. Once you have traced him, his Icon doesn't need to be in that Node anymore. You can keep Tracing him, and as long as he's still on the Matrix you've got him. You just need to keep his Icon in the Node you're tracing him from for as long as it takes you to complete the Trace.

So no, you can't just try to find "John Smith" and track him without knowing anything about him, even if John Smith is on the Matrix. You've got to find his Icon first, and that might take some legwork.

So, would the possession of the marks commcode suffice? Or do you to actually meet their icon? Because in this case they're trying to find a mark that's evading attention :-/

Again, the commcode isn't enough. You need to find them in a node and run a trace from there. Knowing a person's commcode doesn't give you anything for trying to find them physically. It just means you can call/text them.

Aight, thanks, you've saved my bacon!

The CommCode is their E-Mail essentially. You might be able to track where they did their latest communication using it, but nothing more.

Of course, if said communication is a confirmation of purchase for Mariner's tickets a half-hour before gametime...

False.

People need to look up Passive Traces in Unwired.

Also, I HEARTILY suggest ignoring the 'successive extended test -1' rule when dealing with a Tracewar/Trace-off. That is, Trace User vs Spoof Trace. That is, the extended -1 rule makes it pretty much impossible to trace a hacker that is spoofing the trace. The Tracer wants to hit the threshold of 10, and the Spoofer wants to keep increasing the threshold - but the spoofer never gets a penalty to his dice pool because its not extended.

Also telematics infrastructre software IS capable of precise triangulation.

Do you have a page number handy for that? I'm having trouble finding "Passive Trace" in both my copy of UW and in the combined index.

Same here :-/ Please provide a page number if you can.

I don't think its labeled precisely under Passive Traces, but its in or around the Hacking section, somewhere near the 'Spotting Traces' rules.

Edit: Will dig up a page # in a sec

Edit 2: Relevant pages are Spotting Traces Unwired 104, and The Access Log, page 65, paragraph 4. Possibly Spoofing A Data trail Online, page 99, as it deals with changing your ID and helping foil passive traces

Hope that helps!

All that just has to do with a user's access ID, which is explicitly *not* a commcode. Having a user's commcode does not let you track them. Having their access ID does, but that is not the same as a commcode.

If I understand correctly, just having someone's Access ID isn't even sufficient to trace them. This seems to be an area where the rules and real-world diverge in subtle yet significant ways.

As far as the *basic* Trace User (/Subscription) action goes, Access ID basically isn't important anyway. You need exactly one thing: to find their actual icon in a node. Access ID is what you *get* from a successful trace. This is weird, because SR4A specifically says that your Access ID "can be used to trace you." It's also weird because you could already get the Access ID of an icon with a simple Analyze action.

We get a hint of why this is from the Spoof section:
So… if you *can't* find an icon (and thereby Analyze the ID), you can still Trace a communication? What's that mean? Capture Traffic works on a specific device if you're within *its* Signal range, so presumably you just point at it? Oh well. Doing so should net you *that* device's Access ID (except the Spoof bit implies the opposite), which a Detect Hidden Node would've done anyway, I feel, but maybe not.

There are indeed other applications besides this basic one, though:Note that what this information *is* is unknown, though we know it's *not* Access ID (the next sentence says the spider doing this will learn the Access ID, just like a normal Trace). However, if you changed your location or ID since logging off, this Log-based trace will only give the old location and ID.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this, though:Presumably this actually means you can be traced via your handler connection to the botnet (a subscription).

Is Access ID something like an IP address, used to route data to you? In that case the Access ID is a way to track you, whether your icon is in sight or not.

Or is Access ID more like a MAC address, used to uniquely identify a device? It doesn't actually contain information about how to route data, just who to route data to?

If Access ID is the latter, then how about the former? How does data get routed to a Node? Is there some central server keeping track of the routing information? Wouldn't that be a major hot item to discuss in the hacking rules, since it's crucial to tracing people?

Suppose you've tracked someone to his home Node, and he pulls the plug, goes offline and so forth. A day later, you try to find the Node again. You've seen it, how do you find it again?

I can't seem to find a game system for finding a Node on the Matrix, only for detecting nearby wifi, not in the world at large. How does it work?

AFAIK, it's nothing that a) makes sense *nor* b) resembles reality. The trick seems to be to not think about it.

I've always understood the Access ID to be something akin to the Mac Address of network cards now, as it's my impression that all commlinks (and other WiFi hardware like nexi, drones, cars, etc.) have unique Access IDs. I wouldn't worry about the IP address part of it at all. Now if you're really concerned about finding particular public nodes, I think the Browse program (Data Search skill) will cover it all.

And as Yerameyahu said, this part is better if you don't think too much about it. Do remember that at the time that SR4 takes place what we know of the internet has completely died and been reincarnated twice.

If you run a Trace action because you know their Access ID--presumably from running an Analyze on the home node, you can find them anytime they are online. Technomancers can send a Sleuth Sprite to find them, bloody anywhere in the world, with a name and a datafile. Commcodes make it even easier...

As a Hacker, you Spoof your Access ID, and change it every time you pull a new job, log off a system and back into a new one. Just make it a standard thing that you do, and you make life for other hackers damned difficult to find you--they can track you back to the last node that you used the Access ID in.

But, Bishop, where in the rules does it say how to trace someone via Access ID? I just posted most of my quick search… nothing. :/ Resonance is a whole nother thing, so let's leave that aside for now.

You can trace someone via access *logs* as far back as that last connection, but I haven't seen anything about just using Access ID in general. Even less about commcodes.

SR4A, p. 223 (Access IDs)says that your Access ID can be used to trace you. If you are not in the same node as the Persona/Icon, I would use a Data Search + Scan test, following the second paragraph from SR4A p. 230 (Data Search). If the node is accessing the same RTG, then the data trail should be evident.

It doesn't explicitly state this is "How to Track a Hacker by Access ID," but it uses the information provided within the system to do such.

The only thing I know of to track via commcode is the Resonance power mentioned above.

Right, yeah, I mentioned that the *fluff* says it's possible. I'm asking if the *rules* actually ever explain it, cuz I couldn't find it. I don't think Data Search implies it, especially saying nothing about it when it's such a primary function.

That sounds like a decent house rule, but you'd think they could have been bothered to give us more than tea leaves.