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Disney Help Parents Track Kids Via GPS
Parents can now easily determine the exact whereabouts of their children by tracking them through their cell phones equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Disney Mobile is introducing cell phones, designed for 11-to-15-year-olds, with what Disney calls Family Locator – a tool that pinpoints the phone’s position via GPS. A GPS device evaluates signals from at least three satellites to reveal its position anywhere in the world. Sprint has introduced a service similar to Disney’s called Sprint Family Locator, according to the Web site newsfactor.com. And Silicon Valley-based Wherify is coming out with the Wherifone, designed for 7-to-11-year-olds, with a GPS locator.
Parents enter a password and can find out the location of their child’s phone through another phone or the Internet.
Story Continues Below Instead of a dial pad, the Wherifone has just five buttons – one for 911, three for preprogrammed numbers and one for a phone book containing additional numbers. But privacy advocates are concerned that phones with GPS could be used by hackers to locate children they’re targeting – and could eventually be used to track unsuspecting employees or cheating spouses. "The problem with a tracking device is that it’s a ripe target for any number of sinister purposes,” Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a London-based watchdog group, told newsfactor.com.
"Unless a system is absolutely secure, we are creating a system that could make children more findable by others – less secure than more.” One other possible problem with GPS-equipped cell phones: Children can disable the locator function simply by turning off their phone.
Editor's note:
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