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Verizon Wireless Family Locator |
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Written by Ally Bray
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Friday, 30 October 2009 |
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You cross the street, into a neighborhood from which your parents have repeatedly told you to stay away; or you're on your way to a friend's house, but as far as your parents are concerned, you are getting coffee from the Starbucks outside Fred Meyer. Now imagine the same situation plus the new Verizon-Vodafone "Family Locator." This service, which is an evolution of Verizon Wireless old "Chaperone" plan, allows parents to track their children using the global positioning system (GPS) built into all cellphones. Family Locator sends parents alerts via their cellphones or computers on schedules they themselves have determined telling them exactly where their family members are, including a detailed, interactive map and step-by-step driving instructions which will take them straight to their children's coordinates. Until recently, Verizon Wireless "Chaperone" service was limited to use on the LG Electronic's Migo phone, but the Family Locator expansion, introduced in September, is now compatible with a number of phones, including the LG "enV" TOUCH, Motorola Rival, and Samsung Alias 2. Sign-up with Family Locator has been streamlined into an entirely online process, meaning long calls to customer services or multiple visits to the Verizon Wireless store have both been eliminated. Verizon Wireless has given the service a makeover as well, introducing new features, such as scheduled updates listing the nearest address of a child's location, and improving upon old characteristics of Chaperone, giving the old map a new 3-D, bird's-eye-view presentation. The service costs $9.99 per month for each phone being tracked, and includes unlimited messaging and data usage, according to the Verizon Wireless website. "[It's] way over the top," says junior Katelyn Hart, a member of the Verizon Wireless network. "If you trust your kid enough to go out and have a cell phone, you should probably trust them to be good." Trust is certainly an issue when it comes to family tracking plans, which are offered by Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextell, and AT&T. Parents are not the only ones capable of utilizing the service: jealous boyfriends, girlfriends, or spouses can take full advantage of the opportunity to closely track the whereabouts of their significant others, and things can quickly slide into awkward ground. In 2000, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to consider a new set of privacy rules that take into account advances in geographic location information. In October of 2007, New York Times journalist Laura M. Holson investigated the upswing in the use of GPS as a means of locating friends and family. In her article, "These Phones Can Find You," Holson makes the point that "If GPS made it harder to get lost, new cellphone services are now making it harder to hide." In order for Family Locator to be applicable, The “Locator” and “Locatee” phones must both be under the same account. If an employee has a work phone paid for by his boss, the latter has the ability to track the phone. The same applies for parents who pay for their children’s phone service, spouses on a joint plan, and so on. While junior Katelyn Hart doesn't foresee her own parents considering the service, she thinks it is likely that there will be high school parents who take advantage of it. "If your kid is really out of control, [it makes sense] to use it." If you would like to share your opinion on the new Verizon Family Locator, feel free to contact the Grantonian at
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