Tracing anybody’s mobile phone [The Guardian]

Textually.org reports on a very entertaining article in The Guardian, where Ben Goldacre explains how he tracked his girlfriend’s whereabouts for a full week through her mobile phone.

“For the past week I’ve been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It has been very interesting to find out about her day.”

“First, though, I ought to point out, that my girlfriend is a journalist, that I had her permission. Getting hold of her phone I took it upstairs to register it on a website I had been told about” (which according to Textually.org is probably World Tracker).

“Signing up, deleting the text messages requesting confirmation, even following a person-shaped blob (his girlfriend) in the middle on an online map left no trace in her cell phone.”

Ben set up the website to track her at regular intervals, “taking a snapshot of her whereabouts automatically, every half hour, and plotting her path on the map, so that I could view it at my leisure.”

Don’t leave your phone out of your sight! In just 5 minutes, anyone, any company could set this up and track you.

What’s more: “your mobile phone company could make money from selling information about your location to the companies that offer this service. [… So,] call your phone company and ask it to find out if there is a trace on your phone. Anybody could be watching you”.