Cell phone manufacturers track customer locations without explicit consent in order to gather data on consumer habits and send targeted ads. While this data can be used to improve services, it also raises privacy concerns as personal locations and routines are tracked without awareness or ability to opt out. Most experts agree that cell phone tracking without consent violates privacy rights, as it allows unknown parties to reconstruct people's daily lives and movements without permission. Strict privacy regulations and user consent are recommended for any location tracking services.

1. Life On The Grid
iPhone Becomes
Itrack

2. INTRODUCTION
• New technologies today have advanced companies such as phone manufactures
like Sprint, Verizon and Apple and helped to create better products like the Iphone.
Your phone can "access the Internet, visit your Facebook page, get Twitter feeds,
watch video, and listen to music al with the same communication and media
device. Less well known is that living on the grid means near continuous tracking of
your whereabouts, locations, habits, and friends. This less known information
brings up very interesting questions regarding the tracking software in the phones,
especially whether or not it is a violation of a person's privacy. The popularity of the
new location-based services have grown exponentially but so too have concerns
about the privacy of the individual subscribers. "Many observers fear these
services will operate automatically, without user permission or awareness

3. 1. Why do cell phone manufacturers (Apple, Google, and
BlackBerry) want to track where their customers go
• Cell phone manufacturers want to track where their customers go because:
• Manufacturers and their customers can use this information to trend consumer
buying habits and pinpoint poorly selling or defective products.
• Enables carriers and retailers to cull important information about a phone through
its lifecycle, pinpointing when a unit is shipped, received, returned, and refurbished.
Both Apple and Google claim the information is being used only to identify the location
of cell phones for Wi-Fi-connected phones, and to improve the customer
experience of location-based

4. services
• Apple’s technology reads the signal strength of nearby Wi-Fi
transmitters, identifies and maps their location, and calculates the
location of the iPhone device.
• Advertising firms will pay Apple and Google for that information
and for distributing their mobile ads, manufacturing firms will earn
money from there.
• Enable advertising companies send us advertisements, coupons, and
flash bargains, based on where we are located.
• If our cell phone is lost, then the manufacturers can help us to track
the location of our cell phone.

5. 2. Do you think cell phone customers should be able to
turn tracking off? Should customers be informed when
they are being tracked? Why or why not
Yes, I think that there should be a feature to turn such features off.
Customers should be informed even though most apps do display
that GPS and network access is a requirement for the application.
By doing so, the privacy of customer will be protected. Sometimes
customers might don’t want others to know where they are and what
are they doing so it is better to turn tracking off. For example, if we
don't want our location to be tracked on our cellphone by police, just
turn the GPS off, otherwise we've got no expectation of privacy

6. How to Prevent Cell Phones from Being Tracked :
• Watch for signs your phones is being tracked. Does your battery
drain faster than it should, is your phone interfering with your radio
even when turned off, or is your phone still warm after hours of
being idle. You may also have difficulty turning your phone off, your
phone may light up when not performing any of its normal
functions, or you hear strange background noises during your calls.
While none of these alone indicate your phone is being monitored,
several together can be cause for worry.
• Take your phone to your service provider. Ask them to wipe your
phone's memory and restore it to its factory presets. While this will
erase all data, it should also remove any tracking and/or
eavesdropping software on your phone.

7. • Keep your phone turned off when not in use. While this will
do little to circumvent eavesdropping, it will prevent the gps
in your phone from broadcasting your position. Tracking
devices can only find your location when you make or receive
a call and/or text.
• Call your wireless service provider's customer service. If they
are tracking your phone, they are charging your account for
this service. As it is illegal in most countries for a private
citizen to track another phone, your service provider will
inform you whether they are tracking your particular phone.
If they are, you can have this service removed from your cell
phone.
•

8. 3. Do you think cell phone tracking is a violation of a
person’s privacy
• Yes. Smartphones contain a treasure trove of personal information,
including banking information, travel plans and family photos.
However, while use of advanced security software is commonplace
on our computers, many of us are not safeguarding the personal
information stored on and transmitted through our smartphones.
While there is security software for smartphones including anti-
virus and encryption software, it is not available for all models of
cell phones and has not been widely adopted.

9. • Yes. Smartphones contain a treasure trove of personal information,
including banking information, travel plans and family photos.
However, while use of advanced security software is commonplace
on our computers, many of us are not safeguarding the personal
information stored on and transmitted through our smartphones.
While there is security software for smartphones including anti-
virus and encryption software, it is not available for all models of
cell phones and has not been widely adopted.
• Apple iPhones and Google Android smartphones are regularly
tracking people locations and recording this information in a hidden
file stored on our phones. Anyone able to access our phones can use
the stored locational information to reconstruct our daily travels
and routine.

10. • Verizon Wireless is selling all our app usage and location
information to marketers.Verizon is not only tracking consumers, it
is sharing that information with other companies, and possibly
linking it to databases with more of your personal information.
• Cell phone tracking is a violation of a person’s privacy. Cell
phone tracking enables someone to track other person location
without the consent of that person. It will cause disturbance for that
person or cause many problem, such as the enemies of that person
can track that person location and plan to murder that person.
Moreover, bank information or other private and confidential
information flow to other people means it violate a person’s life.

11. • Strict ethics and security measures are strongly recommended for
services that employ positioning, and the user must give an
informed, explicit consent to a service provider before the service
provider can compute positioning data from the user's mobile
phone.
• Officially, the authorities like police can obtain permission to
position phones in emergency cases where people including
criminals are missing. So, the cell phone tracking should give to
some specific people, not to all the people. That specific people
make sure the information not flow to other people.