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by CGMthrowaway 144 days ago
No real 747 flew this. It was a prank using impossible flight data via ADS-B spoofing. Ground-based “software-defined radios” (SDRs) broadcast fake transponder signals to trick ADS-B Exchange. This works because both the ADS-B & AIS systems use unencrypted, unauthenticated data.
1 comments

It was sent to ADSBexchange's API, not over RF. No laws were broken.
Yep, as evidenced by the "Source:Other" tag on ADSBExchange. Signals actually sent over the air would show ADS-B, TIS-B, etc, as the data source.
It’s only “other” at the very last point. Go earlier in the track and it shows as “ADS-B”, but every historical real flight in this plane is MLAT (it doesn’t broadcast its precise position but it can be inferred from receivers)
That's not true. And if you click almost anywhere else on the spoofed track it will show as Source: ADS-B.