Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forMarch 29th, 2003 | back to home

29 March 2003

Verilocation in the UK is providing a service that lets you pay to pinpoint the location of predefined mobile phone users on a map of the UK (as long as their phone is on). It’s probably very useful for business (and could be handy if you have a friend who calls you telling you they are lost) but I am concerned their privacy protection seems a little inadequate. If you can get ahold of someone’s mobile phone bill and sign and send back a form on their behalf granting permission you can then track your target anywhere. I think their “personal” service is much better from a privacy perspective – that one requires the target phone to reply to an SMS giving their permission to be tracked each time.

Thanks to Smart Mobs for the link.