Cell Phones – Is that a locator in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Cell phones are a nearly ubiquitous these days. Many of us care them with us at all times and give little thought to how the technology works. I won’t go into the legal differences for cell phones vs. land lines (there are drastically different legal treatments of the two technologies when it comes to tapping the “line”) but I do want to talk a little about cell phones as tracking devices.

You’re probably used to your phone working wherever you go and you have probably never given a lot of though to the question of “how does the phone company know to make my phone ring no matter where I am?” Do they send that same ring out to every tower in all the cell networks in the world simultaneously? Of course not. So how does it know to connect your call to you, where you’re at? The answer is that your phone does a “ping” ever once in a while. This ping (much like the computer networking term and the naval term it derived from) is sent from your phone to the closest cell tower to let it know that you’re there. This way the phone company knows where to send your calls when they come in. What you may not know is that the phone companies keep these records. In effect they have a log of where you are, and have been, for years. In Ireland this has sparked a legal battle, though nothing of the sort has erupted here in the US.

Of course this information isn’t all nefarious; but it is necessary for the network, and is now required by the US govt. Thanks to E911 legislation; cell carriers are now required to be able to get coordinates of a cell phone user who calls 911. Of course this technology is equally useful for locating users for other reasons. It hasn’t taken marketers long to see the benefits of this. McDonalds knows that no matter how much it spends on advertising, most of its sales come from people who see a restaurant and drive in (or thru). This is partially why you see fast food restaurants everywhere and why you see competing restaurants near each other. Now think if you could contact those people and send them a message, “stop in the Burger King ahead and get a $0.99 Whopper”.

Consumers are also being sold this technology. In some cases, it’s a mapping service; while in others, it’s a set of personal tracking services. Many of these are sold to parents as a way to keep track of their children. In other cases people are using the technology so they can keep in touch with their friends (Mologogo, MSSLAM).

The take away is that, whether you know it or not, your cell phone is always tracking where you are at. This data is stored for an undisclosed period of time. You are also not able to have this data deleted or keep it from being collected (unless you turn your phone off). Since this data is sent at all times your phone is on, this data provides a very descriptive set of information about where you are, and have been. I’ve known more than a few privacy advocates that use pay as you go cell phones and get new phones every month in order to diminish their traceability. This seems a bit extreme to me though each of us will decide what level of privacy we want. Remember that since this is not considered your data (legally speaking) you should be comfortable with this data being collected, and potentially sold. Some countries (like Germany) have enacted privacy legislation to allow users to request that their data be completely removed from a system (current case deals with computer IP information). Of course this is in response to the European Commissions’ Data Retention Requirements.