AT&T launches family-tracking service

AT&T is offering a new service that allows parents--or potentially jealous spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends--to track loved ones using their phones.

(Credit: AT&T)

AT&T's service, called FamilyMaps, allows people to track the location of any cell phone on AT&T's network from a mobile phone or PC. The person being tracked receives a text message informing him or her that he or she is being watched. The service periodically informs the tracked individual that he or she is being watched, just in case one text message reminder wasn't enough.

Users can either track someone in real time by viewing the location on a map or they can set up the service to send them text message alerts or e-mails with location information. For example, a parent may get an alert each day that his child made it home from school. Or perhaps a jealous girlfriend looking to keep tabs on her boyfriend could set up the service to notify her if her boyfriend happens to wander into a bar or over to his ex-girlfriend's apartment after work.

Users can only track phones that are part of their family plans. This means that stalkers looking to keep tabs on their old flames won't simply be able to type in their ex-lover's phone numbers and start tracking. (I suppose those people will just have to settle for stalking via Facebook and Twitter updates.)

The service uses satellite GPS technology and cell tower triangulation to pin-point the location of the phone. The service is not supported on prepaid or AT&T Go Phones. And the service costs $9.99 for two phones and $14.99 for up to five phones.

Location-based services are nothing new. They've been around for years and are expected to generate a lot of money for carriers in the future. Already, most major mobile operators are offering some kind of location-based service, such as GPS-enabled navigation or tracking.

Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and Alltel have each been offering "tracking" services for more than a year. Sprint Nextel has even lowered the price of its service from about $10 a month to $5 a month.

The social-networking company Loopt also offers a "friend finding" application that can be downloaded on certain phones. Loopt is offered as a free application on Apple's iPhone, which operates over AT&T's network. It's also offered on some Verizon and Sprint Nextel phones.

There are several other social-networking services that use location information to track or find friends or share information via a cell phone. Google also offers a tracking/friend finding application it calls Latitude. There are also other services, such as FourSquare, Whrrl, and Brightkite.

What's different about these social-networking location services from the service AT&T is offering is that these other services often require those being "tracked" to also run the application on their phones. These services also typically have privacy settings controlled by the person being tracked that allows him or her to turn off their "friend-finding beacon" and to hide from certain individuals.

[He_And_Him_Studios]

Yay, just what I want, my parents knowing exactly where I am, unless I switch cell phones with someone else who's actually going where I said I was going, and get their phone.

[MrReason]

I just tried the system and it is horrible and totally useless. My son's phone responded within a 2.2 mile radius of where he might be and my own iPhone was .7 miles even though when i open Google maps in iPhone it had my position dead on. I thought it would be usefull in finding my son's phone since he always seems to lose it, but it couldn't even put me within a street or 2 of it.

[ralfthedog]

It depends on the quality of the GPS built into your cell phone.

[Lakebook]

This is great. I can track my son/girl when she gets older. Way to go ATT!

[GeorgeRaft]

Let me think: Price this service at 14.95 and sell it to a few hundred people who have money to burn, or price it at a couple bucks a month and sell it to anyone who wants to keep track of there phone or family, (thousands of users) Like usual, greedy AT&T is trying suck the market dry and not selling a useful technology to hardly anyone.

[DragonStab]

If you don't want the person to know you are tracking them, just get an account with two phones and hide one of them in their car.......

Of course you will need to retrieve it periodically to charge it. Unless you can also wire a hidden charger to keep the phone powered. Nice spy tech AT&T ! !

[terminalblue]

this is great!

now i can just toss a cell phone in my ex's trunk!

[georgetang]

This is just stupid...

Now that more and more smartphone out there.... using Google Maps have that tracking... of course it's voluntary....

But, seriously why would I want to pay to be track?

[Universal_Indie_Records]

I would pay for it. Both of my kids are young, and god forbid they were ever abducted.

[semimu1]

The tone of this article is extremely biased. Many other carriers in North America offer these types of services (Sprint's Family Finder and VZW's Chaperone). All them require the phones to be part of the same family plan, making it very difficult for a third party (ex-boyfriend) to actually stalk anyone.

Nice idea on the hidden cell phone (saw that on one of those TV dramas). Maybe Chuck.

[USDecliningDollar]

This is the road to Hell.

[Dalkorian]

... but it's paved with good intentions!
(or so we're told)
;-)

[MrReason]

If that were true it would be able to put me right in my office building as google maps does on my iPhone instead of somewhere within .7 miles of my actual location. Worse, this remains true even after i manually locate myself on google maps.

I don't know why so many people are worried about privacy, this system just doesn't work well enough for that to be a concern. I wonder if other carrier's services are so imprecise???

[USDecliningDollar]

i just fired up my "crackberry" and with google maps it hones in on my approximate location within my office building - the same goes for when i am at home - mine is accurate enough to determine which quarter of the house i am in.

[jeremyjohnson72]

Verizon has had the GPS Chaperone service for the last 2 years, I got my son and daughter kids phones and I can track them with in like 100 feet just from the net with verizons service. 2.2 miles is a joke it could be anywere in the city

[callfree]

we have been using services from http://www.trackandlocate.net.

Mobile phone tracking at its best, Pin point accuracy, mobile phone position is determined by GPS and then displayed on Microsoft Virtual Earth maps.

Last month their mobile phone tracking application even got LBSzone.com App of the week award, this explain something.

Cheers

[rs3]

lol.. another era for parenting. And another trend for the kids being watched to go crazy...lol... theres always somthing new. Luckily we dont have it here. If it were me i'd just take two sim cards.

[Dalkorian]

You forgot the word "helicopter" before parenting.

[Pocket Full Of Blues]

I hope it boosts the signal in Harpers Ferry, WV. 60 miles NW of DC and I am barely on the edge network with a bar...

[princefeliz]

Why even pay for a lousy service when you can be on Google latitude which is more accurate and free.

[Dalkorian]

AT&T
Your world.
Delivered.
To the NSA, RIAA, MPAA,
some people you know,
and whoever else we damned well feel like.
Shut up and take it, you slave,
AND PAY US!

[pj-mckay]

Clearly you'd need to sign up as a willing associate OR be given a phone by your guardian and understand the basis for the tracking, So what's the problem? It provides a service for those that want it. As for the others; then don't buy into it.

As for the crap about stalking... dont participate and it won't happen. Get a life !

Given AT&T history of cooperation with the government on illegal monitoring, Dalkorian should add the entire US government. After all, the parents taking their children to the first day of first grade may really be a terrorist meeting in disguise.

All tracking should be by consent or by court order. Calling emergency service (911 calls) would be considered consent. Calling the non-emergency number for police or fire would not.

[Nathanhanover]

Who really needs this. I can always tell when my woman has been away from the barn. She always comes back with unexplainable bruises on her knees and hips, vaginal bleeding, occasional red hicky marks in her inner thigh and inner knee, and smells and or tastes like Condoms.

It would only be easier if she brought back the pictures and videos.
Its sad and gross but completely true. At least she uses the condoms, right?

[caramcabe]

thia system is bull ****. who ever came up with this idea is a prick. thanks a lot for now allowing half of the teenage population to get caught if they go some where there parents didnt know about. i might just switch networks bec of this bull ****.