Using Cellphones to Track Your Kids

David Pogue at the New York Times wrote this week about a new, novel use for cellphones: tracking your children. Several new ventures, including ones from names like Disney, Verizon, and Sprint, will offer web-accessible locating services by pinpointing the G.P.S. signal in their commercial devices. There's also some discussion of child-specific services, like the 'Whereifone', which is more 'Star Trek communicator' than actual cell. From the article: "To pinpoint the phone's location, you call up the Web site, enter your password, click 'locate,' and presto: an icon appears on a map -- either a street map or actual satellite photo. In the photo view, you can zoom in enough to see individual buildings. These are existing satellite photos --you won't actually see your child standing there -- but this feature is still creepy and awesome. You can even watch 'bread crumbs' appear on the map as the phone moves around (cost: one talk-time minute apiece). That could be helpful if you're trying to assist someone lost on the road, or in the kinds of emergencies encountered primarily in your nightmares."

Comments

Re:this is terrible

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Kids are clever these days. They'll soon realize they can turn their phones off to go places parents shouldn't know about. Or let the battery drain, so they don't get blamed when they get home ("oops, I forgot to recharge it! sorry...").

Heck, one of my friend's kid even uses an ultrasonic ringtone so his teacher at school can't tell the phone is ringing. Apparently, it's based on the fact that adults can't hear high frequencies children can. Kids are clever and have always been. If they want to do something, they will, and no amount of technology you can graft on them will change that.