World Tracker turns anyone into a cellphone spy

Forget those piddly wiretaps. The next frontier in warrant-free surveillance is upon us, and it's open to everyone. A UK service called World Tracker apparently uses cell tower data (or GPS, when available) to track the location of just about any GSM cellphone. Just enter the number you want to track into the service's handy Google Maps-based interface, and you'll be able to zoom in on the device's location, with accuracy somewhere between 50 and 500 meters. The first time you try to track a phone, a text message is sent to the owner, who must reply in order to enable tracking (we'll leave it to you to figure out how to work around this if you need to track a spouse, kid or employee). The service is currently compatible with O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, and has plans to expand to other markets including Germany, Spain, Norway and the US. If, that is, privacy advocates don't shut it down first.

[Via Pocket Lint]

[zosima a. panares @ Oct 12th 2006 11:24AM]

I hope you can help me recover the passwords of my lenovo cell phone. I forgot the password given by my friend from Thailand. I could not contanct him. His number is in the phone but I could not open the phone. The camera, messaging have passwords. Please help me

[Denise @ Oct 16th 2006 12:55AM]

My husband's company transferred his nextel account to theirs and I no longer have access to his account I desperately need to find out their password so I can view his call history.

[monica @ Nov 7th 2006 3:29PM]

I need your help.. please contact me, regarding voicemail code how open it..

[mike @ Mar 22nd 2007 2:01PM]

did u ever figure it out?

[Josh @ Jan 20th 2006 3:22PM]

Not the first service, but the first i have seen to use google maps.

[mol @ May 29th 2007 9:30PM]

i lost my phone! i dont live in the uk can someone track it or something? :/?

[Rocky @ Jan 20th 2006 3:26PM]

Bloody 'ell!
The road advertised is only a couple of blocks away from me in Wandsworth?! Surely hide his name and number! :inshock:

[diulei @ Jan 20th 2006 3:37PM]

Hmmm, time to turn my phone off unless I'm making a call.

[max @ Jan 20th 2006 3:46PM]

LOL How maany times is that guy gonna get pranked tonight?!

[Rob @ Jan 20th 2006 3:49PM]

Ok, I've signed up and the service looks pretty cool. It works on a credit system though and you have to pay a minimum of a �1 for 4 GSM location credits (don't know if this means 4 lookups or 4 mobiles). It does do GPS lookups for free and it managed to show my own address on the map.

[mike @ Mar 22nd 2007 2:15PM]

hey where did u sigh up for this if u could email me [e-mail]

[tooobizzzy @ Apr 2nd 2007 3:02AM]

Let me know where I can sign up also if you would. I have a wife that I think isnt straight with me

[Liberty @ Nov 16th 2008 6:06PM]

Can you give me the name of the website to track a cell phone with please? [e-mail]

[Jimmy @ Jan 20th 2006 3:55PM]

Cool but not cool....

Cool that you can tell where your friends are and stuff, you could even tell if your girlfriend was cheating on you, haha

Not cool that people could like look up your phone and like know where you are and stuff....

Cool when used on other people, not cool when used on self

[Scott @ Jan 20th 2006 4:00PM]

I'm glad I'm on a CDMA network!

[Jimmy @ Jan 20th 2006 4:02PM]

I'd be a lot cooler if it was free....

[Kyle @ Jan 20th 2006 4:03PM]

wasent there a free version of somthing simular out there. Remember seeing it on the news a while back .

[Paul-Michael Bauer @ Jan 20th 2006 4:10PM]

Since this is "opt-in" on the part of the trackee, how does this constitute a privacy violation?

[ryanhmusic @ Jun 8th 2009 4:58PM]

it is fairly easy to go around the sms "op-in" especially if you know the person personally/have access to their cell phones... there are however other ways (without the phone) to get around it.

[tb @ Jan 20th 2006 4:10PM]

i am never ever signing a contract for several reasons,
this just finalized the deal.

i'm sticking w/ prepaid tmobile for as long as i can, they don't even have my name.

[evo @ Jan 20th 2006 4:12PM]

If you think that's scary, check out http://locatecell.com/

Given a cell or land number, you can get a physical address, or given some other info you can get a cell or land number. You can even get a list of calls made from a cell number.

[Chiefsteve @ Jun 19th 2007 12:31PM]

That's nothing, check out VISUAL ROUTE. You can track and get personal info on each hop and a map. The gumint uses it. I got it. Way cool as you can monitor activity from like FBI servers to see if they're reading your mail

[Marcus @ Jan 20th 2006 4:23PM]

I took a quick look at the site, first off, to locate someone else, they need to allow you, via a txt, second, using the free service its not very accurate, it got me in the right city, but im sat on the opporsite side of it to what the map is telling me, so not too helpful. The paid service may be better though.

[Big Brother @ Jan 20th 2006 4:23PM]

I've seen this before...oh yeah here http://tinyurl.com/8ce8y

[n8 @ Jan 20th 2006 4:31PM]

What a tremendously bad idea. I certainly hope this is already illegal in the United States, and if it isn't, it should be. Can you imagine the nefarious purposes this can be put to?

[Dale @ Jan 20th 2006 4:46PM]

#10: It's opt-in, but you could dial your wifes cell while she is in the shower and accept the text message without her knowledge and away she goes . . . . you follow her all the way.

Should not be so easy to do this, but we all knew it was only a matter of time. In 5 years you'll be able to track a live target on a google map in real time. In sat view!

[Robert @ Jan 20th 2006 5:02PM]

Their web site is terrible. You can't find out anything about the service without giving them an email address. Can' they at least let you know something about the services and costs without soliciting marketing information from you?

[Guesty Mc Guest @ Jan 20th 2006 5:14PM]

Accutracking.com lets you load a java based software app into your *OWN* cell phone, and then you create a username and passcode and can view *YOUR OWN* cell phone's location anytime, anywhere using Google Maps. Not the same as this service, but pretty cool, and free.

[mike @ Mar 22nd 2007 1:39PM]

How does this work do u have to download a program to your computer first or do u just log on a web site. How do you go about using this

[Ventmore @ Jan 20th 2006 5:26PM]

Signed up, and was gonna buy some credits...however...it seems that the credit card payment page is non-secure.

[pb @ Jan 20th 2006 5:57PM]

From my understanding you send a text message and when they reply to it the service then tracks what tower that message came from. ONE MESSAGE, ONE TRACK. You don't send one message and they reply and you can track them forever...that would be impossible on a regular cell phone...maybe on a smart phone that could have software to run full time in the background.

Another reason to believe this is that the page says, no monthly costsbut uses "location credits". Which means that you pay for each text message through the service and one message means...one track.

[Andy @ Jan 20th 2006 6:42PM]

God. I hope this is illegal.

Screw even requiring consent; the mere fact that the technology exists for third parties to determine someone's location is staggering to me. What happens when the software or equipment become available for anyone to use?

This is really pretty scary.

[gord0 @ Jul 10th 2008 6:49AM]

How on earth do you think the cellphone network works!

The location of your phone is always known by the network to at least as close as the neares mast, and at most times is in contact with three masts. The strongest available signal from one of the contactable masts is used except when that mast is already fully loaded.

One would expect the phone company to know the physical location of each mast, and so from knowledge of which masts you are near and by comparison of signal strengths thay can get rough idea of where you are. They always could.

Out of doors in an unpulated area the strength of signal cmparison can be pretty accurate. In a bulit-up area the bulidings interfere with the signal strengths and so is less reliable, but also many more masts with lshorter ranges are used in built-up areas because there are more phones to serve and each mast can only handle a limited number of calls. (This is because of the fundamental physics, not a technological limitation. Dividing the country up into a large number of short-range cells is exactly how it all works.) So in built-up area even though the strengths might be all to pot, you usually have to be nearer a mast to get access.

Usually this only works to one or two hundred yards and sometimes can be out by a mile or so, but that might well be enough for some purposes. (Eg wife says she's in Bradford visiting sister, but in fact in Leeds with some other bloke.)

So just for the phone to work you have in effect given the phone network consent to identify the general location of your phone, and by implication yourself. Keeping your location secret from the mobile phone company, (or at the very least the equipment they operate) is impossible. That's how it works.

The GPS locator in some modern phones is only supposed to operate when emergencly service calls are made. At least that's the idea. Unilke public call boxes etc, where the geographical location of the phone is instantly known, calling emergency services on a mobile can be problematic. The caller may not know the name of the street etc. So being able to locate the phone within a few metres is very useful indeed.

As for abuse.... If a technological system has the potential for abuse it will be abused.

None of these work of course if the phone is turned off. So if your'e cheating on your partner, turn the phone off!

[Ixalon @ Jan 20th 2006 8:29PM]

I've been signed up to a similar service for a couple of years. On registering the mobile, they send a unique code to that mobile, which you then have to enter into the site to be able to track. You can then track that mobile at any time, however every 3 or so months a text message is sent to the phone reminding me that I can track myself. A very useful service for when someone swipes your expensive new phone if they don't replace the SIM card before you check the location.

[Chris Taylor @ Jan 21st 2006 12:07AM]

I would love a version of this for Virgin Mobile prepaid for example. I want to stick a $30 prepaid phone inside my rocket or balloon satellite and when I think it has landed "call up" the phone and have it give me its rough GPS coords :-) then when I am close enough I am hone in on the beeper inside the rocket. that would rock !!

Chris Taylor

[sotie @ Jan 21st 2006 2:14AM]

"I've been signed up to a similar service for a couple of years. On registering the mobile, they send a unique code to that mobile, which you then have to enter into the site to be able to track."

What service did you sign up with please?

[Matt @ Jan 21st 2006 12:03PM]

Is there any software to use a cellphone connected to a computer as a GPS device? That would be cool. Unfortunentally, I don't think I'll ever see one for my phone.

[Tornton @ Jan 23rd 2006 4:50AM]

It's sometime quite useful in case of ony criminal activities against any person. Easy tracking of lost or seized persons when GSM is ON. at the same time it is very powerful thing for criminals as well to track a victim. Not sure that this feature can be guarded and controlled at the appropriate level from the point of view of law.

[Tornton @ Jan 23rd 2006 4:51AM]

Sometimes it's quite useful in case of ony criminal activities against any person. Easy tracking of lost or seized persons when GSM is ON. at the same time it is very powerful thing for criminals as well to track a victim. Not sure that this feature can be guarded and controlled at the appropriate level from the point of view of law.

[zoara @ Jan 23rd 2006 8:15AM]

to #20, pb:

It's perfectly possible to track a mobile phone 'forever' - that's how the phone network actually works. Each mobile sends a 'this is me' signal whenever it moves to a new transmitter (in fact, it's constantly renegotiating which transmitter it should be on). If it didn't do that, the network would 'lose' your phone whenever you moved between transmitters.

Ever had your phone near speakers when driving? That 'duht-duh-dhut-duh-duht' is your phone renegotiating.

Each phone is uniquily identified by (memory is fuzzy here) either the SIM ID, the IMEI (handset ID) or a combination of both. This data is usually retained internally by the operators - because of privacy issues - but can be released to the authorities if required (eg during murder investigations).

It's been a while since I worked at Vodafone HQ so the details may be fuzzy, but that's pretty much how it works. It's also possible to 'listen in' to any mobile on the network without the user's knowledge or permission, I've seen a demo during my work there. You can even set a desk phone to ring any time a call is made to or from that mobile number, and the owner of the mobile is none the wiser that you're listeing in. Privacy nuts, go mad.

[chyenner @ May 28th 2007 7:15PM]

I have been searching high and low for that website of that product. I saw it once and cant find it now. Could pleeze Let me know what it is and any similar that you know of?
Thnx

[evangelistal @ Dec 5th 2007 1:12PM]

I'm in AZ(USA) now and my wife is staying home in NJ(USA). I WOULD LIKE TO TRACK MY WIFE cell TO SEE IF SHE IS TELLING THE TRUth. We use tmobil.

Thank you,

[David @ Jan 23rd 2006 8:33AM]

This technology has been around for a while. I've used fleetonline.net, which does the same thing and is targeted at trucking companies who want to track their fleet.

[MAMA @ Jan 27th 2006 5:09PM]

I am a comment spammer: [e-mail]

[mama @ Feb 1st 2006 8:26PM]

I am a comment spammer: [e-mail]

[Alasdair Allan @ Feb 2nd 2006 12:02PM]

This technology has been around for a while, I remember playing with it sometime around 1995. On the other hand the recent article in the Guardian got me thinking about ubiquitous data access, see http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/2006/02/tracking-phones.html

[BakedDon @ Feb 4th 2006 2:58PM]

It works if phone is off or on. We are all being Watched.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4116664323318911505&q=alex+jones

[V-ger @ Feb 6th 2006 1:46PM]

I would allow tracking on mine permenantly - just to be able to locate it EVERY time I misplace it!!!

[johnadeoye @ Feb 9th 2006 8:47PM]

I am a comment spammer: [e-mail]

[Jolinda Phelps @ Feb 13th 2006 8:29PM]

#28 in Readers Comments mentioned the fact that a cell conversation can be 'listened in' on without the user having knowledge. My husband is calling his ex (I've checked his phone bill repeatedly). He says they are JUST FRIENDS..yeah right. I really, really want to listen in on his conversations. How do I do that? Someone help, please? Thanks.