Google lets you track friends and family through their mobiles

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mercurial

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Google has launched a tracking service that lets parents keep an eye on their children - and wives keep tabs on their husbands - round the clock.

The software allows owners of mobile phones or BlackBerry hand-held computers to have their whereabouts followed by family and friends anywhere around the world.

Once the service is activated, the location of a person's phone appears as a blue dot on a map on the screen of whoever is allowed to monitor them.

The Latitude feature is being promoted by Google as a 'fun' way to 'keep tabs on someone special'.

However, it will raise concerns about privacy - and whether it is encouraging a Big Brother culture.

The software is included in the latest version of Google maps for mobiles - software that allows mobile phone owners to browse maps on the go.

'This adds a social flavour to Google maps and makes it more fun,' said Steve Lee, a Google product manager.

Google insisted there was no threat to privacy.

It was up to each user to decide whether to make their location visible to other people - and who could monitor their location. The service was designed to help people keep in touch, a spokesman added.

Once switched on, it plots the user's location by using information from mobile phone towers and global positional systems.

If a phone is equipped with GPS, then it pinpoints the location to within a few yards.

If it isn't, the location is only accurate to hundreds of yards - or in rural areas with few mobile phone masts, several miles. It requires each user to turn on the tracking system, and then choose who they want to share their location with.

People can decide to accept or reject requests from other people to share locations.

Google says the service is not open to abuse.

It is promising not to store any information about its users' movements.

Only the last location picked up by the tracking service will be stored centrally. A Google spokesman said: 'You can choose to hide your location from any person, or just give them a city-wide location.

'You can also type in your location manually.

'That means someone can put in their office, when really they are down the pub.'
Google said it developed the tracking system's privacy settings after holding talks with charities helping the victims of domestic abuse.

There had been fears that violent husbands could insist their wives use the feature to keep track of their movements.

It will initially be available on BlackBerry mobile phones and devices running the Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 operating systems, such as most Nokia phones.

It will be available to iPhone users in the next few weeks and will work abroad in 26 countries, including the United States.

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Link

There are some YouTube links showing how it all works.
 
I like it, especially for keeping track of children when they're out and about. I remember my parents getting worried about me more than a few times. Also if you get lost someone could use it to find you. It does open up privacy concerns but they seem like they've been working on it.
 
Do not want. Seems very stupid.

People can decide to accept or reject requests from other people to share locations.
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Riiiight -- so more bothersome prompts to waste your time, while Google makes more money. Seems like SPAM to me. Next your boss will
hear about it and will want to track you in your off-time. Marketing companies ... etc. S T U P I D. Even maybe your girlfriend.
Why do people get so excited over these intrusion-of-privacy things. Don't you folks have better things to do in your spare time
then accept or deny requests for location data sharing?
 
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I tested this quite extensively recently with my Nokia N82, with integrated GPS. It works OK, but can do with some further development.

When tracking yourself for example, your icon moves across the screen until it reaches the end of it and then disappears. You have to refresh manually in order to load the new part of the map where you have moved to.

This tracking should be done automatically if selected to do so, because otherwise it forces you to fiddle with the phone whilst driving.
 
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Without GPS on your phone it's pretty useless, especially in metropolitan areas where there are literally 1000's of possible locations between the linking cellphone towers.
Some phones even stay on one tower until the signal gets too weak before switching to a closer tower. In the meantime the user may have passed as many as 3 different towers in the area, giving an accuracy of roughly 10km... Probably not too shabby for SA military tracking standards... :rolleyes:
If you work for the SA secret service and want to eliminate a subject, just bomb the closest 10 city blocks and you may just hit the target! :D
 
i want too track myself cant find a decent phone app that can do this
 
wezhira said:
i want too track myself cant find a decent phone app that can do this
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I really love Latitude - the good thing is they way it runs in the background after you exit it and confirmed it must keep on sharing your location. Now when someone steals your phone you should be able to track it, unless they switch it off.

If you want to record tracks then you are better off with gpsed from www.gpsed.com

But my new gps favorite for realtime tracking is latitude. So what if it does not work on inferior phones yet (SE/BB/IP) at least is is going on Symbian and WinMo and that is pretty much all that counts.

What I also like is the way it works on non GPS phones like the old E65 and N73.
 
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