Track People Using Their Mobile Phones

Richard W.M. Jones writes "A couple of new services have been rolled out in the UK recently which allow you to track people when they have their mobile phones turned on. Mapminder states 'It's important to know where your loved ones are for your own peace of mind'. 192.com asks 'Do you want to know where your children are?'. Of course the police have been able to do this for a long time, and evidence from mobile phone positions has been used in high-profile court cases in the UK. Silicon.com has an article."

Comments

the moral is

[iggymanz]

if you're going to whack someone, first hide your phone in a restaurant a couple miles away....then you can "prove" you weren't at the crime scene.

Re:the moral is

[Anonymous Coward]

This is probably story they're refering to.

Two pieces of phone evidence in the Soham case:

1. It disproves the position of someone who's part of an alibi.
2. It gives the rough location of a girl just before her phone dropped off the network.

So on its own it's not 100% conclusive, but taken with eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence, it can certainly back up evidence quite considerably.

Amazing how the truth comes out

[rebeka thomas]

Back around 1999 & 2000 there were rumours/news stories about the possibility of being tracked by mobile phones, and much discussion about how it wasn't really technically possible. Phone companies denied it could be done, many law enforcement agencies denied they used it (although some were forthcoming enough to say more). The general consensus was that it was something out of the XFiles.

Now it's commercial a scant 3 years later. Who'd have guessed.

Virgin Mobile have kept records...

[Realistic_Dragon]

Of users location since they started in 1998. It would be fantastic to be able to get access to this and find out where you had been and when - bet it would make a pretty map.

This can save lives too, you know....

[menscher]

During a family vacation in New England, we were driving on some windy mountain road somewhere near the border of NH and VT. We came across an accident (motorcycler ran into a tree). Well, there were lots of tourists there, and all had cell phones. But nobody knew where we were (not even which state, since we were near the border). Spent about 15 minutes arguing with operators who wouldn't send an ambulance without a specific location, while the guy lay bleeding on the pavement.

That was about 10 years ago, but certainly shows how cell-phone signal triangulation can save lives.

Re:This can save lives too, you know....

[sonamchauhan]

If you're so concerned about saving lives, then why don't you carry a GPS with you and read off the numbers to the 911 operator.
That should be his choice. All he is saying (and he is correct, of course) is that cell phone triangulation can save lives.

There's no reason for them to know where you are unless you want them to.
He wants them to.

Cell phone companies already know roughly which zone your cell-phone is in (if it is turned on). And there are laws to protect privacy, etc.

If you don't want the cell company to know where you are, turn your phone off.

if you're worried about it

[SolemnDragon]

Oke. Most of the services are opt-in. And there are good reasons, including kidnapping, theft, and accident, why you'd want your cell phone to broadcast its location.

If you don't, including for police and other emergency services, you've still got an opt-out: Take out the battery. This is not as permanent as leaving it at home, and gives you privacy. But be sure to be someplace you don't mind having listed as your last known location first.

Me, i'm pretty comfortable having my location known, and feel oke about this being part of the cellphone i'm shopping for lately. i've seen too many people go missing in Boston to really like the idea of being vanished from the map. I always swore that the child-leashes in malls were a bad idea, too, until a friend's kid got snatched. They closed the mall and found the guy- in less than five minutes he'd changed the kid's clothes and dyed his hair (which was still wet with the dye.) Now i'm not so sure i don't like the leashes, you know?

sol

Mapminder's software

[SashaM]

Just to brag, I (and one other guy) wrote the client side software of the maps at MapMinder. The company who wrote the whole thing is Telmap, which was founded by me and a highschool friend of mine :-) Took me about 2 months to get the maps to look as great as they do.