The personal tracking device: Sci-fi no longer

Let’s face it: we’re in love with the idea of secret location trackers. In The Da Vinci Code, the bad guys slap a location-tracking button onto Tom Hanks’ clothing. In The Matrix, a location-tracking scorpion robot crawls into Keanu Reeves’ abdomen. In Total Recall, a tracking device is implanted into Arnold Schwarzenegger’s nose.

Many parents may have fleetingly harbored the fantasy of equipping their children with such tracking devices (though perhaps not through their noses or navels). You could find out instantly where your teenager was, or find out that your middle-schooler didn’t come home after school because of a rendezvous you forgot about.

But this is one sci-fi gadget that’s no longer fiction, thanks to advanced satellite-based tracking based on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. At least five US companies – Wherify Wireless, Guardian Angel Technology, Disney Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Sprint – have built GPS tracking into something children carry voluntarily: cellphones.

The super-simplified Wherifone ($100), for example, is intended for very young or old customers. Because it has no number pad, it’s probably the smallest cellphone you’ve ever seen – about the size of a Fig Newton. On the company’s website, wherifywireless.com, you can program three of its four speed-dial buttons to dial Mom, Dad and Gramps, for example; the fourth summons an address book containing 20 more numbers. The phone can receive calls from any number, although you, the wise parent, can restrict incoming calls using the website.

The phone comes in five colors. The plans range from $20 a month (60 minutes of talking) to $47 (200 minutes); checking a phone’s location counts as one minute of calling.

To pinpoint the phone’s location, you call up the website, enter your password, click "locate," and presto: An icon appears on a map – either a street map or actual satellite photo. In the photo view, you can zoom in enough to see individual buildings. These are existing satellite photos – you won’t actually see your child standing there – but this feature is still creepy and awesome.

You can even watch "bread crumbs" appear on the map as the phone moves around (cost: one talk-time minute apiece). That could be helpful if you’re trying to assist someone who’s lost on the road, or in the kinds of emergencies that you encounter primarily in your nightmares.

The Wherifone is not, however, a full-blown cellphone. It looks and acts more like a Star Trek communicator. Its screen is crude, tiny and black-and-white. There’s no Internet, ringtone downloads, games, camera or text messaging, though some parents might consider that a bonus. The phone has a hissy quality that makes all calls sound as if they’re coming from the seashore.

The phone from Guardian Angel Technology (guardianangeltech.com) is quite a collaboration; the company makes neither the phone (Motorola), the cellular network (Nextel), nor even the billing plan (Boost Mobile).

Instead, what this company brings to the table is the GPS software. The company offers three phone models, none of which are cutting-edge, and one of which (the $75 base model) looks as if it’s from 1994. You can also buy any phone from the greater selection at boostmobile.com, and send it to Guardian Angel for GPS enhancement. Many of these phones offer Nextel’s walkie-talkie feature.

On the upside, the GPS tracking on the Guardian Angel phones is more sophisticated than its rivals’. For example, you can see a full 30 days’ worth of "bread crumbs," which could settle the occasional argument about your teenager’s whereabouts the last few weekends. And you can opt to have street names superimposed on the satellite-photo view (just as in Google Maps, which powers this feature).

The downside is the pricing: $30 a month just for the tracking. You can start and stop this service as needed, but it’s still much more expensive than its rivals.

Then again, the Guardian Angel phone is prepaid, so there’s no annual contract, monthly bill or credit check. You buy minutes in advance. This kind of plan makes a lot of sense for many young consumers, although the minutes are pricey (20 cents each, 10 cents at night and weekends).

If you’re worried that classmates will make fun of the weird-looking Wherifone and Guardian Angel phones, consider Disney Mobile. Its flagship phone ($50 each after rebates and with a two-year commitment), looks like a cutting-edge, sleek flip-phone – because it is one. This phone, made by LG and dressed in red and silver, has a camera, video capture, text messaging, Bluetooth, speakerphone and voice dialing, plus Disney-themed ringtones, wallpaper options and phone themes.

You get five free location checks a month; additional checks cost 50 cents each. No breadcrumb feature is available, and you see only street maps – not aerial photos.

You can make a location check from a website (disneymobile.com) or, better yet, from your other Disney cellphone. (Most people get two Disney phones, since the monthly plans include two phone numbers.)

Your own phone’s screen might say, for example, "Casey’s Phone. Near 18 Whippoorwill Ln, Chicago, IL 60609; accurate within 20 yards" – and you can summon a map right on your phone’s screen.

Performing location checks from your phone is a huge benefit not available to the Wherifone; you can do it with Guardian Angel phones only if your own phone has a full-blown built-in Web browser.

Disney also offers the best parental controls. You can establish allowances for calls, text messages and downloads, for example, and you can limit calling by time period. You can set up whitelists (lists of approved phone numbers) or blacklists (not permitted). You can also blast "family alerts" to the screens of all of your family’s phones at once; a handy menu offers ready-made phrases like "Running late. Be there soon!"

Unfortunately, these premium services command a premium price. Plans range from $60 a month (450 minutes) to $250 (4,500 minutes). That’s much more expensive than, say, Sprint, which provides Disney’s service. With Sprint, you get twice as many minutes for the same $60. No text messages are included in Disney plans, and calls to Disney phones outside your family aren’t free, either.

Each specialty-phone candidate offers something unique: Wherifone’s four-button simplicity; the pay-as-you-go feature of Guardian Angel; Disney’s parental controls.

Each entails some compromise, though – like inflated rates, a microscopic selection of phones and, perhaps, the necessity to switch carriers.

For many people, two newcomers to the track-your-kid market may offer less severe tradeoffs: Verizon Wireless and Sprint.

For $10 a month, you can add either company’s tracking feature to any regular calling plan. Sprint’s Family Locator feature offers 58 trackable phone models for your kids; Verizon’s Chaperone plan offers four phones, including the Wherifone-like, four-button Migo for younger children. You, the parent, can perform unlimited location checks either from a website or your own Sprint or Verizon phone (30 models from Sprint, 12 from Verizon). Sprint’s map webpage is far more sophisticated than Verizon’s – it offers aerial views, reports of past locations and the ability to add your own landmarks to the map (like "Robin’s house"), but it’s incompatible with Safari, the Macintosh browser).

Sprint also allows you to limit Web access on the child’s phone, although only one Sprint phone can restrict individual phone numbers.

Verizon offers, for yet another $10 monthly, another equation-changing feature called Child Zone, in which a text message notifies you every time your child strays beyond geographical boundaries that you’ve set up. It’s like a more humane version of the electric doggie fence.

With all of these phones, your main frustration is likely to be coverage. Guardian Angel’s phone, for example, uses the Nextel network, which is smaller than the major carriers’.

The Wherifone switches among GSM networks like Cingular and T-Mobile as necessary. Even so, the tracking feature depends on those companies’ cellular Internet networks, which cover smaller areas than the voice signals.

Fortunately, the tracking usually works even when the phone is indoors or in a car. Unlike, say, car GPS units, these phones don’t require a direct line of sight to the sky, although you may be out of luck when they’re in concrete rooms or the middle of office buildings.

In every case, consult the companies’ coverage maps before you buy.

It’s also worth pondering the moral implications of this technical advance. What these companies are selling you is, in effect, a spying tool. How comfortable are you playing Big Brother – or, rather, Big Momma or Big Daddy?

Only Sprint informs your youngster, by text message, each time you perform a location check, so you can’t snoop around undetected. The other companies permit spying with total stealth; the Guardian Angel phones’ packaging and manuals don’t even mention the tracking feature.

Maybe that’s a good thing. After all, remember what always happens in the movies once the hero discovers the tracking device. Arnold Schwarzenegger extracts the circuit from his nose, Carrie-Anne Moss sucks the scorpion from Keanu Reeves’ belly button, and Tom Hanks confuses his pursuers by tossing his GPS button into a passing truck.