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Wednesday April 15, 2009
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 Want to track your kids as they (supposedly) head for the mall? How about your ex-girlfriend?
Creeps and protective parents both have something to love in the new AT&T FamilyMap service, which uses the GPS chip on the target phone to provide you with an exact location. (If the phone lacks a GPS chip, cell-phone triangulation is used, which is far less precise.)
AT&T charges $9.99 per month to
locate up to two family members or $14.99 per month to
locate up to five family members. AT&T offers a free month of service once you sign up, however.
This isn't a first; Sprint's FamilyFinder has been around for some time, and it's far cheaper: just $5 per month to track up to four phones.Verizon's Chaperone service also offers the ability to track up to four phones for $9.99 per month. In most cases with all three plans, only specific phones are covered, and they generally don't cover prepaid phones, including AT&T's service.
The target phone is notified by a text message, according to the Boy Genius Report, which allows the user to be made aware that he or she is being tracked. After that, though, Big Mommy is always watching.
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April 17, 2009 10:26 AM
The "ex girfriend" part would not work. The phones that are tracked via this service need to be on the same account. Very unlikely that you share a cell phone account with an ex.