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New Phone Uses GPS To Locate Your Contacts
Salvance writes "Palo Alto-based Loopt Inc. has announced an agreement with Sprint Nextel to immediately begin offering their cell phone mapping service to all 3.8 Million Sprint Boost subscribers (Sprint Boost is a service specifically targeting the under-25 market). This service will notify users when another subscriber in their contact list is within 25 miles, providing a real-time map displaying their contacts' locations. According to the article, the only apparent privacy safeguard is to provide users the option to 'temporarily cut out from being spotted by their friends.' Given a retailer's propensity to package together extra services, and the average user's lack of knowledge regarding their phone's capabilities, this new service seems ripe for abuse."
I'd think that'd be the bigger news. They're so tiny! And now I will never lose them.
They should set it to be able to track within, like a mile or even less.
Wulfram II - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Gam
I'd rather know when my contacts are within .1 mile than within 25 miles. At least 10% of my contacts spend most of their lives within 25 miles.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Could be good for search&rescue, kidnap victims, people lost in unfamiliar areas, and the like.
Its more likely, the still hormone strengthed under-25 crowd will spend their time catching their significant others in otherwise undetected social situations that had previously gone undetected. Or, was that what you meant?
how much do you think sprint is gonna get owned in lawsuits?
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
..... for the first lawsuit regarding the misuse of this technology to be filed? Methinks seconds. Maybe minutes at the most.
The upshot is that lawyers now have a new income source.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
...can anyone here tell me what makes this even remotely (pardon the expression) a GOOD idea?
We have been using technology to bring people closer, but there are some advantages to keeping one's distance.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
It seems that no online rights of mine would be affected by this phone. In fact, I think it barely has anything to do with my online rights as well.
This is marketed to the under 25 crowd? So if you are sitting in a lecture hall, you are constantly getting an update of where everybody in your 50+ buddy list is on campus at that moment?
This can't operate the way they describe.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Hmm? Oh, pardom me guys, it's a mesasge on my phone...
ted from acctg is shaggin ur gf lol
Thanks, Sprint!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
FTFA: "The real-time tracking would only occur for those who have agreed to be located and had given the user their mobile phone numbers." So you have to agree to be tracked in the first place.
Does one agree to be located in general, or on a per-person basis? If it's in general, how can I know who's tracking me once my number is available to them?
...
I'm not worried about stalkers, personally, but this is the sort of thing that you might see being handed out to girls on college campuses or boys on grade-school ones.
Married couples could see this causing trouble.
Tony: "You shut tracking off for a few hours there. Where were you?"
Toni: "You're a freak. I'm leaving you."
Tony: "For the guy/girl/goat that you were off with when you went off the radar?!"
Honestly, though, it's kind of a cool feature.
So when I tell one friend I'm staying in because I'm tired, and go out with another friend for some beers, and tell yet another I was working late, I'm gonna get screwed when they all locate me nearby.
How about they work on dropped calls and poor coverage first.
Welcome, young Skywalker. [Looking at cell phone] I have been expecting you.
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
The GPS in most cellphones is such a piece of garbage there is no problem with this. the Boost mobile phones have even crappier GPS than normal. I would say that the service will not work far more than it will be abused. A cellphone in your pocket get's ZERO Gps signal. Hell the GPS in my blackberry never shows a good location and it's sitting 1.5 inches away from my body, a friends boost phone with built in GPS app couldnt get a lock on 3 sattelites within a 25 minute period sitting still in a clear sky condition.
Sorry, but every phone I have ever seen with GPS has not worked worth a damn unless you hold it still for 5-10 minutes away from your body when clear skies. Until they put a 1/2 way decent gps in these phones it will not work. Tracking you based on tower works far better.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Lack of knowledge about a phone? Get real. This is the under-25 crowd we're talking about. Do you think the 40+ year-old moms & dads are going to be the ones lining up for these products? And to a GenY'er, a phone is almost an extention of themselves. Ringtones, downloads, games, IM's, push-to-talk, voicemail, etc. are all an essential part of staying online.
That being said, I do think that there is potential for abuse. Stalkers, for instance. Or college profs following up on students too "sick" to attend class. (but plenty well enough to catch a movie or go to the beach, instead!) Also, how long before this information is subpoenaed by attorneys. (For instance, in auto collision cases -- if client was at a bar for three hours prior to a fiery crash, that doesn't look good.)
However, it could be a cool feature -- see who's nearby for a quick lunch meet-up. Finding your family/friends at an amusement park/mall/beach/etc.
Like nearly all technologies, it's benign. It's up to the user to make it good or bad.
Perfect for stalkers and suspicious spouses, now all they need is 30 seconds with your cell phone to enable this option and they own you.
How about if I have your number programmed into my phone and you don't have mine? Can I harvest cell#'s and 'war drive'?
Even better do they realize we can triangulate someone closer then their resolution if I have 3 of these phones locating the same #? If all mappings are relative to 'Jack' (person on contact list) then if there are 3 other locator's that are given mappings relative to Jack then each mapping on the 3 phones will have different information to Jack's location.
With this information combined can we get a closer look at where Jack is?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
When I call someone on a land line, I know exactly where they are.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
...who was imagining someone looking at the ground and squinting wondering how GPS was gonna help that guy locate his contact...
An interesting concept might be to know who is within a certain distance from your house. Say, the only authorized individuals are, me and somebody else and then if anybody else is around with a phone it would notify you. Criminals have cell phones and they aren't smart.
Why would I want to have my cell phone be able to find my contact lenses? That's going a little too far!!!
The phone company has to know where you are so they can route the call to the correct tower. Phone companies log everything.
This service simply exposes the information to other cellphone users.
The only way to avoid having location information recorded is to keep the phone turned off and have incoming calls go to a pager.
Seems odd - check up on the locations of people you can walk over to talk to in person. Or don't young people do that any more? Oh well there's no end to the stupid crap you can sell to the younger generation.
Alright, when Jim walks in the door, everyone turn on their phones !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I'm not sure i have ever seen a campus that couldn't fit within a 50 mile diameter circle.
You mad
Why stop at contacts; let's see all subscribers on a map!
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
-- M.B.W.A. - Management By Walking Around
The GPS isn't going to work unless the person is outside and their phone has an unobstructed view of enough satalites long enough to get a fix. I don't see that happening all that often. Not to mention, I imagine most users will be turning off their GPS to save battery life.
When the GSM and CDMA networks are opened as wholesale carriage with competition, like the long distance carriage and local origination/termination industries have been, then the playing field will finally be level. The beginning revolution in component telephone services integrated with familiar phones and contacts will finally include the mobile terminals ("phone") and all their advanced features, including the personal ones like presence. That will mean we'll have more choice over the features of our terminals, like we do with our PCs. And more control over our data.
The existing mobile network operators have consolidated, rather than competed. And kept locks on end-to-end control of their networks, services, data, terminals, subscribers. But multimode roaming 3G, like WiFi/CDMA, and mixes of Bluetooth and WiMAX, will finally open the mobile networks to too many competitors. Especially as the legislative climate long favoring media ownership monopolization tends to wane.
In the meantime we'll be stuck with the services, phones, prices and privacy the Sprint/Verizon/AT&T oligopoly wants us to have.
--
make install -not war
:%s/Can you hear me now?/We know where you are now./gc
And all over the world, parents, pedophiles, and policemen are cackling and rubbing their hands with glee.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
You could do that right now with a small two-way radio and a GPS. It's not hard, and if you are planning on doing something like that, you're probably not going to be bothered by the fact that you're supposed to have an amateur radio license first.
They seem to be out of production right now, but there was a company that was making little integrated units consisting of a GPS receiver and Amateur radio transceiver, that fed into the APRS system. I think it was a combination of this transmitter and an equally small GPS. They were pretty slick, and have a lot of cool (legitimate) uses.
Bugging someone's car and following them around isn't very hard, and hasn't been for a while. Probably the hardest part of the whole procedure would be finding someplace on the car to put your GPS antenna where it wouldn't be noticeable, but would still receive the satellite signals.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Many her complain about phone GPS, but I recently had a verizon that had excellent service. It could even give door to door driving directions. It was expensive, but nonetheless it worked well.
This could be handy but I would want to be able to turn it on for individuals, not the world. Also, 25 miles is worthless. 90% of my family and friends are always within 25 miles. It would be more useful if it said they were using the same tower or within 1-2 miles.
My biggest fear is that they will charge for people to be able to track other people. Then once that is popular they will charge for the ability to turn tracking off the service so other's can't track you. It reminds me having to pay extra to have an unlisted phone #.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Screw this negative spin! I think this idea is simply cool. I'm getting tired of naysaying "privacy advocates" painting progress in such dire colors. I'm personally excited to read this story. Our lives could be so much cooler if not for all the worriers and heeldraggers . . .
as a 25-and-under, what i really want is the ability to find my friends inside a club or bar. it is impossible to yell 'the upstairs dance floor!' loud enough to be heard over music. what they need is an ad-hoc triangulation system since GPS doesn't work indoors.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
.... The reason for this technology to exist comes down to three words:
NEW REVENUE SOURCE
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
.. so that you can only accept someone as a contact/friend if they agree. And either party can remove the other party at any time. Just being able to plonk someone on the list doesn't bode well for anyone with a boyfriend/girlfriend-turned-stalker
There is already a web-based service which does that sort of thing. I expect this is just an extension of that technology onto a mobile device.
http://geomobiles.net/
Well that's nice, but why do I need this? It certainly has a nice wow factor to it. The only practical uses I see are for nefarious purposes. You know, stalkers, spying, making sure the bitch isn't messing around on you. But is this really an important feature, or a feature we want? While it might be nice to know that the wife/girlfriend is or is not cheating or lying about her whereabouts, do you really want the wife/girlfriend to know if YOU are cheating or lying about your whereabouts?
Anyone have any ideas for some good uses that don't require certain levels of paranoia?
Nice new tech, but I don't see it becoming a standard, let alone popular, feature in most phones.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I wonder if they will relay the information to the cops when we are going too fast, then automatically send us speeding tickets.
Word!
It's a thief's dream to get a hold of someone phone number, with some social engineering figure out his address and add them to his contact list.
Now wait for the person to leave his home. Take the time you need, you know he's not in range.
Reminds me of a movie called Louis 19. (EDtv was the American adaptation of the same screenplay for the US market) Where the guy is followed 24/7 by a TV crew. One night he comes back and his apartment was broken into and everything was stolen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_(TNG_episode)/
They all had implants that would light-up when rival gang members were near-by...
Maybe Boost will roll that feature out next year...
I'm going to play a hightech pacman with this new feature. It will consist of someone watching on their phone in horror as I make all their dots (friends) disappear.
this amount of stupidity usually requires a group of people
I have GOT to get one of these phones for EVERY ONE of the women I am currently stalking!
Now, I'll need one for my cell phone too... Wonder if it'll effect signal quality?
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
... too see them coming:)
I wanna know where my friends eat and sleep...
Dude. Your answer is a click away. Why spend all that time typing when you could have just clicked the link and found out?
I guess marketing will have to come out with a new slogan. "Where u at?!" will now be meaningless since, well, I can see "where you at."
"I forgot my mantra."
Helio is a joint venture between South Korea's SK Telecom and EarthLink. They launched a slick new device (don't call it a phone =)) last week called the Drift that includes a hybrid GPS receiver (real GPS and A-GPS). It launched with a couple of GPS-enabled services: GPS-enabled Google maps and Buddy Beacon. The latter sounds pretty similar to Boost's solution, but takes a different approach to privacy.
With Buddy Beacon, users must intentionally broadcast their location to their friends list. It does not constantly track your whereabouts and auto-broadcast your new locale. It's more like "find me here" than "i'm searching for so-and-so..."
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
On the plus side, if Sprint can't complete a phone call reliably, your friends will never receive the GPS update of your location, either.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Also, this is for Sprint/Nextel's Boost Mobile pay-as-you-go division, not Sprint/Nextel contract phones.
(Disclaimer: I work for Boost's tech support division. My comments are not intended to reflect the opinions of my employers, and all that jazz.)
you have nothing to worry about.
But I think the government is very happy about this service. I'm sure the phone company would be more than happy to provide this information to the government, if requested, regardless of whether or not you agree to be tracked. Remember, if you irritate the government, you could lose your license to the radio spectrum on which your revenue depends.
After all, if you have nothing to hide why would you object to the government knowing where you are at all times? Don't you realize that this is for the safety of the children? Are you really going to object to technology that could help solve a kidnapping?
It is optional today. But not for long. As soon as the government figures out that this can be used to track everyone, in real time, it will become mandatory. They'll pass the law in the name of "protecting the children", or "fighting terrorism", etc...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
When we founded loopt a year ago, we were excited about the possibilities of being able to find your friends on the go. We also knew we needed to spend a lot of time thinking about how to build a service that addressed all of the important safety, security and privacy associated with location services. As such, we've built the service as a completely opt-in, private network. Loopt is a bunch of private networks of friends. In order to invite a user to be your friend, you have to know their phone number. You can't even browse their profile or message them without establishing friendship. Even when you've mutually agreed to be friends, you can turn off location sharing for everyone or individual friends. There also seems to be a bit of confusion as to how our service actually works. loopt doesn't integrate directly with your phone's contact list to automatically share your location as this post suggests. loopt is a downloadable app that lets you see where your friends are on a map on your phone (and some other cool stuff). Also, if we can't get GPS, we can always get a network-based location. Thanks for sharing all your comments. Please keep in touch with us and drop us a note if you have any questions or comments (feedback@loopt.com)
>"Trsuat but verify"
Regan was senile, but he could pronounce English words properly. "Trsuat" sounds much more like something Bush would say.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
...I've been paying a bit of attention to Loopt, as well as several other tech startups, not because of their products per se, but rather how they've been helped in getting started.
/.
Y Combinator http://ycombinator.com/lib.html is an interesting little VC group that helped fund the likes of Loopt and several other tiny operations with big ideas. While obviously expecting a return on their modest investments, Y Combinator seem to be as much about philanthropy and helping out the little guy, as their extremely interesting and informative articles seem to attest.
From their articles, I've learned a lot about stuff that I didn't think I was even interested in. Folks might want to rummage around their site for some refreshing ideas on when to run (or not) with new ideas, how to get your little operation off the ground, and why the hell no one can seem to make a halfway decent online dating site.
And no, I have absolutely no affiliation with these guys. Just thought they were a refreshing voice in a sea of noise. And they're a big reason why we're reading about Loopt today on
oO0Oo
Hi everyone, I run corporate development over at loopt and am in charge of all things safety, security and privacy related and I just wanted to clear up some major misconceptions reflected in the original posting and in some of the threads, and to reinforce some of the messages presented by Sam Altman, our CEO, in an earlier thread. 1)loopt is entirely opt-in. You must choose to get loopt, choose to become someone's friend, choose to share location with that person and then, and only then, would that person have access to your location. 2)I can promise you that there are numerous privacy safeguards and that there is no way that Sprint Nextel (or us) would ever green-light a service that didn't do everything possible to protect everyone's privacy and safety. 3)Briefly, some of those safeguards include: a.Everything is opt-in b.You can turn-off location sharing, with individuals or with everyone, at any time from your phone or the web or via SMS c.loopt is a private network, not an open social network. You can't even invite someone to be your friend unless you already know their phone number, and there is no open browsing d.We don't ever keep your location history, just your current location, unless you explicitly and actively choose to store a location for your journal, a feature that comes out next week e.We verify loopt members as the holder of the handset account they are attempting to register, to remove any anonymity, the source of much of the misbehavior on the web f.We send frequent reminders to our members regarding their location sharing, and we have constant and conspicuous reminders throughout the application as well g.We've consulted with literally a dozen online and mobile safety groups, including ICAC, WebWiseKids, the Ponemon Organization, and NCMEC to make sure we've incorporated every best practice in the industry into the service We're very happy that so many people are already using the loopt service, and I hope this helps clear up some of the misconceptions. We're always happy get any questions or comments (feedback@loopt.com)
What they don't say is that anyone stupid enough to leave this tracking enabled isn't going to have any friends.
Not for long, anyway...
Jeezus, who the hell would put a GPS transmitter in their eye?
Check out mologogo.com. They wrote a simple little java app that does this exact same thing. Plus, it's free.
Can it GPS tag the pics I take on the thing? Assuming it has a camera..
I did read the article, and it doesn't state whether the opt-in/opt-out is personal or global. That makes a big difference in how one uses the service. As it's described in the article, one could "opt in" to being seen by "friends" but be visible to anyone that knows the appropriate number.
That can be a deal-killer for people who don't want to be seen by everyone.
Before you jump on people, make sure that you CTFA (Comprehend...).
But, of course, that may be why you posted AC.