I recently read a report about mobile networks in the US offering a service marketed as a form of “social networking”. This service actually allowed you to see where your friends were, by tracking their position / movements and plotting them on a map.
This service has, justifiably received some criticism!
The consequences / ramifications of this service are potentially huge. I recently read another article where tracking devices were being fitted by a company to its corporate vehicles. During the testing of this system, one of the technicians pointed out to a manager the fact that the movements of two of the employees (male and female) had some unusual correlations. Being aware of the the implications of this observation the manager was justifiably worried (the implication being that the employees were having an affair, and their privacy was being invaded).
The phone companies counter criticism of their service stating that your movements can only be seen by people with whom you have chosen to share this information. However, this does not really hold water. In the case of a child (many parents would like to know what their children are up to) the line rental is probably paid by the parents, so, conceivably they could share the information with themselves.
Equally, in the case of a company, it is the employer who pays the line rental and gives the handset to the employee, there seems little to stop these companies enabling this service for their own benefit.
Furthermore, I pay for my partners phone (who is not particularly tech savvy), so, there would be little to stop me from enabling this service before giving her the phone, and then snooping on her whereabouts.
On the positive side I can see that this service could be a lot of fun, and really interesting to use, but on the whole I think it is a dangerous idea and would not use the service myself.
That said, when our kids are old enough to have a mobile phone of their own, I may see things differently… then again, who is to say that the child will not share that data with an “undesirable” who would subsequently mis use the information.
This service would be a stalkers dream… not a nice thought!
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