Soon, you will be able to track where ever your friends are via your cellphone. As long as they agree to it, of course.

And, if you agree, they will be able to track you.

SPY CELLS
Phones Will Soon Tell Where You Are
By AMOL SHARMA and JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
March 28, 2008

Would you want other people to know, all day long, exactly where you are, right down to the street corner or restaurant?

Unsettling as that may sound to some, wireless carriers are betting that many of their customers do, and they're rolling out services to make it possible.

Sprint Nextel Corp. has signed up hundreds of thousands of customers for a feature that shows them where their friends are with colored marks on a map viewable on their cellphone screens. Now, Verizon Wireless is gearing up to offer such a service in the next several weeks to its 65 million customers, people familiar with it say.


The wireless industry is cracking open this new market gingerly, mindful that it could face a huge backlash from consumers and regulators if location-tracking were abused by stalkers, sexual predators, advertisers or prosecutors. "When it gets to privacy, that's quite frankly an area where we can't afford to make any mistakes," says Ryan Hughes, a vice president at Verizon Wireless.

Like Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless will use a service called Loopt, led by a 22-year-old, Sam Altman, who created the software as an undergraduate at Stanford. Mr. Altman says he is well aware of the dangers of misuse. "It's one of those things, the more you think about it, the more ways you can figure out a creep could abuse it," says Mr. Altman, who, as chief executive of closely held Loopt Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., still carries a messenger bag to meetings. "I think people realize that unlike a telemarketer call, which can be annoying, a location-based service could be an actual physical safety risk."

A disclaimer that must be signed by Sprint customers who take the service suggests how concerned Sprint is about liability. "Sprint is not responsible for the Loopt Service," it says, and customers disclose their location "at your own risk." The service is currently being offered free as a promotion, but Sprint will eventually charge a few dollars per month, as its Boost subsidiary does.

DanceWme said:

did you see your house?

magnificentsynthesizer said:

im scared to look

i'm sure most of you here are already hip to this, but yesterday i just discovered the new feature with google maps/direction. apparently, some bozo went around every square inch of my city with a panoramic camera taking pictures every nano second and happened to snap a picture of my house on the way and everyone else in my city too, i suppose!

if you go here http://maps.google.com/ma...=en&tab=wl and put in your address, you should be able to see a picture of your home from the street, that is if you live in a major city.

what happened to simple directions?

magnificentsynthesizer said:

Luckily I don't live in a major city anymore. My address doesn't come up.

Stymie said:

oh no?

where do you live now?

DanceWme said:

well, what are you going to do? if it's not there now, it's only a matter of time.

i'm postive Google earth already has a satellite picture of your home.

magnificentsynthesizer said:

The burbs.

magnificentsynthesizer said:

oh my lord its there

Stymie said:

What.City?

Address and zip would be nice too.

this is a trip...the car is driving around in the middle of the day with a rotating camera mounted on the roof taking pictures of everything...they must retouch out the guy with the hairy back who cuts his lawn incessantly across the street...I looked for him

magnificentsynthesizer said:

oh my lord its there

actually ... if someone already knew my address, what added value would it be to him/her to check out google maps ?

DanceWme said:

I know