Your Cell Phone Is Tracking You: Legally Or Not?

GPS triangulation and cell phone location finding may aid us to make our way anywhere — or to aid somebody find us quickly. If you occur to be a missed pet, the patient with Alzheimer's disease or a little kid, that's a great thing, yet what about all the rest of us walking around? Where do we actually stand legally regarding being shadowed by cell phone carriers, smartphone apps or the authorities?

Tracked By The Government

You might suppose that there is a federal legislative act preventing authorities tracking you, at least when they have no warrant. But you would be wrong. Few court decisions in past months have made uncertain messages about the legitimacy of GPS tracking and cell phone location finding by the authorities, and the problem has just started in the US Supreme Court. Earlier in August 2011, the federal judge of New York enacted that police have to have a warrant to legally track any person utilizing cell phone tower triangulation. In October 2011, the federal judge of Washington, D.C., enacted that police should not have the warrant to utilize the same procedure to track the cell phone of the person suspected in armed-robbery.

"Right now, there’s struggle in all circuit courts. We do not have the countrywide policy," said Rhode Island attorney Robert Ellis Smith who is the editor of Privacy Journal, the monthly newsletter, and who aided to write the advising briefing to the Supreme Court on this case. The true question asked by those cases is: In modern digital age, how will the Supreme Court construe the Fourth Amendment's forbidding on excessive searches and property seizure? Is location tracking of all people by the authorities bad? Well, that relies on the situation.

Tracked Not By The Government

But if the authorities can track individuals utilizing their cell phones, so can plenty of other folks. Tracking software may be installed by anybody with access to your smartphone. And quite often the inventive person does not even have access to your mobile phone. "The type of your cell phone, the name of your carrier and the number of your cell phone" are frequently all that is required," said Jodi's Voice (New Mexico online anti-stalking advocacy group) founder Angela Daffron.

Some firms even sell tracking apps that permit any spouse or caring parent to monitor both communications and location of any smartphone. It is not illegal. Earlier last year, the appellate court of New Jersey enacted that it wasn't an intrusion of privacy for the first spouse to install small tracker on the car driven by the second spouse but jointly owned.

Your Safety Is Above All

If you wish to minimize the capability of others to intentionally track you, you have some options.

First of all, say no to any smartphone app that wish to track you. Search for "location services" or some settings like that on your cell phone, smartphone or tablet. Google is mapping all Wi-Fi hotspots around the planet to help in its well-known location data thus if you do not wish the wireless network of your house to be included, you have to add "_nomap" at the end of the name of your home network.

To avoid tracking software anyhow installed on your smartphone, Daffron recommends keeping your smartphone with you all time, and in addition limiting people who know your cell phone number. You may in addition install nice anti-virus software, Norton for example, on your smartphone to keep away all spyware.

If you wish to make absolutely sure that your smartphone isn't being tracked by any means, even for E911 aims then you have to use anti-illegal tracking jammers which prevent all possibilities of tracking your cell phone illegally.

What do you think about your smartphone tracking and its legality or illegality? Tell us what you think in the comments!