Did you know that cell phone GPS tracking capability is built into your cell phone? Yep. Cell phone GPS tracking has been part of cell phone technology since 2005.

It’s so that emergency people can call you if you call 911. And, because the technology is already built into your phone, there are some ways you can take advantage of it.

Getting Directions and Locations

You can use your cell phone like a hand held mobile GPS navigator. You can use the cell phone GPS tracking system in it to get directions to where you are going, or to pinpoint your location.

Unfortunately, although the hardware is built into your phone, the software isn’t. Cell phone GPS tracking usually requires that you subscribe to a service of some kind through your cell phone provider, and it’s a premium service that you have to pay for.

There are software packages that you can purchase for a few phones that get around the service charges, but they don’t work with many of the available cell phones.

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Tracking People

You can also use the cell phone GPS tracking capability in a cell phone to track the people who have the cell phones. You can buy a software package for some cell phones that allows you to keep track of them from your home or office PC.

Cell phone GPS tracking is increasingly popular with parents who want to keep track of their kids. Using this technology, the parents can check on their kids’ locations (or at least their cell phones’ locations) anytime from their home or office PC.

The vendors of this software warn that it is not legal to use the software on other peoples’ cell phones. It is only to be used on your family’s phones.

Keeping track of your kids any way you can is always a good idea, but there are a couple of problems with cell phone GPS tracking.

First of all, it’s easy to see how the technology could be abused. It won’t take some techie ten minutes to figure out how to track your cell phone or mine instead of his kid’s.

It does represent an invasion of privacy. (Kids don’t always need all the privacy they want, of course.)

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