Track the location of 'any' mobile phone!

Quote:

---

"Find the location of any mobile phone". Okay, that's not a unique claim but, seemingly, World-Tracker's new mobile-phone tracking service is one of the cheapest on offer.

There are some ifs and buts – notably "any" turning out to mean only phones that use one of the big four providers, O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile. And, the phone has to be switched on.

Plus, the whole thing does seem rather Big-Brotherish - to keep a track of some of these issues, see the The Watching Them, Watching Us Spyblog. This specific blog, originally about the ChildLocate service, discusses some of these areas in detail.

But none of these things is likely to stop lots of people and companies considering such a service and looking favourably on World-Tracker's new offering which seems to be among the cheapest - though the cost can be as much as 30p per search if you only buy four searches at a time.

---

So what do you think? Good idea or kind of scary (or maybe both)? And what about any better deals you know of?

Check out our HEXUS.headline and let us know your thoughts.

No offence, but this is very old news. Services of this type have been running for years.

The downsides are that it's very inaccurate. It triangulates the GSM signal, which works better in urban/city area's. In more rural area's it can be very poor or fail completely due to the fact the triangulation requires the phone to be within range of 3 masts (can be done with 2 but very inaccurate - using 1 mast can only tell you roughly how far from the mast they are, which could be a massive circular area). On top of that, hills and large buildings can cause false measurements as to how far a phone is from the mast(s), making it even more inaccurate. But i have no doubt that it can be a very usful tool under the right circumstances.

You can't just track anyone's phone, they need to give permission, which is a good thing.

Incidently, if you want to know what masts are nearby and how far they are, there is a hidden service menu in Nokia's for this. Not really sure if anyone would find a use for it though.

dd,

No offence taken - on the contrary your posting will enable me to tweak the story shortly and look rather less foolish.

My excuse, pitful though it is, is that I had not heard about such services before and, although I did a search on the database of HEXUS articles stupidly didn't do one of the wider net.

Having now done that, I see that you're perfectly correct.

However, I'd add some further comments here, some of which I will include in the revised piece.

The first is that the The Watching Them, Watching Us Spyblog (http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/) has some interesting stuff about security issues with such services, such as someone setting up YOUR phone to be secretly tracked, and these are worth reading.

This one relates to the ChildLocate services which spy.org.uk clearly now thinks has got things better sorted: http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/childlocate.pl

The same blog discusses other areas which are well worth thinking about, though.

As for the other services, what does look to be the case is that these are more expensive than World-Tracker's.


VeriLocation location - 35p per search (ex VAT) in bundles of 30
http://www.verilocation.com/default.aspx
=============
http://www.childlocate.co.uk/
from 22.5p per search

The service costs £1.34 per week for a Family Pack of 5 registered mobiles

- Free Connection (worth £10.00)
- 25 Free annual locations (worth £11.20)
- Unlimited text messages from 7.5p a message
- Location from 22.5p
==============
http://www.verilocation.com/Pricing.aspx

Accounts can be closed at any time. Refunds via Worldpay attract a £10 administration charge.

Credits (prices do not include vat)
- 1 credit allows you to locate 1 mobile phone.
- Payments are made online using Worldpay.

Credits Price Each
30 £10.50 35p
100 £30 30p
500 £125 25p
1000 £200 20p
----------------
http://www.followus.co.uk/how_much_does_it_cost.html

Looks to be somewhat more competitive but still more than World-Tracker

cost per location - 25p, plus (one-off?) charge of £1.25 per phone

Special (limited-time?) deal

An unlimited number of mobiles can be added to your mobile phone tracking account.

Starter tariff is only Ł14.99 and includes 50 locations.
===========

Just so people don't think dd or myself are going mad, this is what the first posting in this thread originally said:

-------------------

Quote:

---

"Find the location of any mobile phone". That's the rather astonishing claim made for World-Tracker's new mobile-phone tracking service.

There are some ifs and buts – notably "any" turning out to mean only phones that use one of the big four providers, O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile. And, the phone has to be switched on. Plus, the whole thing does seem rather Big-Brotherish. But none of these things is likely to stop lots of people and companies grabbing the service with both hands, even though the cost can be as much as 30p per search.

Parents of teenagers are certain to like the idea, almost as much as their kids will hate it. Businesses with a lot of delivery drivers out on the road are going to think it's a great thing, too, even if the drivers don't.

So what do you think? Good idea or kind of scary (or maybe both)?

Check out our HEXUS.headline and let us know your thoughts.

---

-----------------------

Indeed speaking from experience i was the first person in the UK to develop a voice based location service for Orange UK and i'm afraid that the complexity of "locating" people is far and away more complicated that what has been discussed here.

I can't go into detail i'm afraid because of agreements signed, but Its certainly not triangulation any more, the technologies used are far more complicated, and if an EU legislation change due this year comes into force the level of accuracy and the real time aspect of tracking could be an awful lot more scary that it is today.

I'm also aware of a service o2 was using to help the emergency services, and believe me that was definitely not Vague in its detail.

3rd parties simply don't have access to the core functions of the network operators, i've worked the with location brokers stored inside the network operators and lets just say its certainly an interesting system :)

TiG

yeah, i thought my girlfriend was cheating on me so i did some research on phone tracking... dug up a website called "www.I don't trust my bird cos I have a small penis.com" <- Zak edit
I tried it out and it works awesome... i could see exactly where my girlfriend was. I can't believe this technology is legal. Week later tracked my girlfriends phone location with the website and found out she wasnt really at work like she said she was... Try it out guys, easy way to find out the truth.

-Love is only in movies.-

I thought this sort of service required the person being tracked to give permission?

I suspect that trig1 is just a spammer pimping the website that he mentions ...

I think this is a brilliant idea for families with younger children, but as soon as they start to grow up a little you need to give them freedom.

World tracker is just a reseller of followus.co.uk:

http://www.world-tracker.com/v4/contact.html

Quote:

---

World-Tracker is a business based in the Isle of Man. We are part of the www.netcetera.mobi group of companies and are a reseller of the FollowUs service.

---

Followus.co.uk have been around for at least 7 years - I first used them in 2003, and it wasn't new then....

I am somewhat worried about Zak & his affliliations with Spammers now, if he knows their penis' sizes...can we really trust him to protect us from them! :eek: :iloveyou:

Scary stuff this tracking, not that i give a toss! My life looks nowhere near exciting enough for people to care. ''He is at work, he is at home, he is at the pub.....rinse repeat & refresh''. Knowing that tells you nothing, that I am doing at those various locations...oh yeaaah! ;)

Stuff like that freaks me out :S

The thought of being able to be tracked. But lucky for me im on Tesco mobile ;)

I don't mind being tracked by friends & family, don't really do anything out of the ordinary to be bothered about being tracked by others....although I'm pretty sure google have a good idea of my where a bouts most of the time.

:D

I find the tracking apps in Android pretty useful - I can sent a link to my parents before I travel and they can check where I am to the accuracy of my inphone GPS for a prescribed duration. It's really useful and saves them wondering 'are we nearly there yet?'. Also if you ever had an accident the person expecting you can find out exactly where you are assuming your phone's still on and the time limit hasn't expired.

I should have mentioned, there was a Symbian programme I used to have on my Sony Ericsson P900 which switched the phone between loud / mute / changed the background etc depending on what mobile masts you were nearby - that was pretty cool for 6 years ago but not the most reliable bit of software I ever used.

Hi guys

To track any mobile phone i suggest you to have a look on geo3000.com

It allows to track any mobile handset (on compatible networks like AT&T, Sprint, Verizon ....)

there is nothing to install on phone so it works with any phone device model

For my part i use it to track my phone on AT&T network (track my daughter :-) )

But i guess it works on many other networks.

I just had a go on the Lookout 'Missing Device' facility. It was accurate to 3,500 metres, apparently. That's not going to find me my phone, is it?