Background Briefing.

Every time you turn on your mobile the SIM card in the handset registers its presence with your network e.g. Vodafone, Orange, whatever. This means the networks always know where you are, or they have the capacity to know where you are, because they know what cell you are in, or the one you were in the last time your phone was switched on or had power. Of course as you move around and between cells the networks therefore also have the possibility to track your movements. The mobile phone companies are now using this information to sell new types of service, known as location services.

In the UK we have 5 major mobile phone networks: 3, 02, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange. Virgin and one or two others that appear to be networks in fact lease capacity from one of the 5 so, for these purposes, they are irrelevant for the moment. None of these 2 nd Division networks have launched any location services yet, and if they do they are likely to follow the same path as the others.

In the UK two types of location services are now available: passive and active. They are both marketed as “value added” services.

With active location services you sign up directly with your own network: say Orange. There are then only two parties to every transaction: you and Orange. You can use the service to ask Orange to tell you where the nearest Chinese restaurant is, or the nearest bank or railway station, cinema, or whatever. It can even provide you with a little map to show you how to get there from where you are situated at the time of the request.

Passive location services are very different. With passive services there are four parties: the network, the company providing the location service, the locator and the “locatee”.

In the UK the 5 networks have entered into agreements with about 40 small companies to sell passive location services. Unlike with the active location services the networks do not market or sell the services directly. With the passive services all the marketing, promoting, sign up etc is done by the intermediary companies. These companies have names like “Map-a-Mobile” or, in the cases I am concerned about, “Locate-a-child”, “KidsOK” and so on.

Map-a-Mobile and the other companies sell their products on the internet, through call centres or through various retail outlets on the high street e.g. Carphone Warehouse.

So to sign up with Map-a-Mobile, I first have to prove who I am and, and then I say to them I want to track the movements of Fred Smith whose mobile number is 07777 888888. Map-a-Mobile send a message to Fred Smith’s mobile saying, in effect, “Mary Honeyball on 08888 00000 wants to track you. Do you agree?” If Fred sends back a message saying “Yes”, then from then on I can check where Fred is at any time of the day or night and he will never know exactly when I am checking on him.

Periodically Map-a-Mobile will send Fred a message reminding him that he is being tracked by me and reminding him that he can suspend the service by sending the message “STOP” to a certain short code number. So Fred could suspend the service, but it is all or nothing. If you are on it you can be tracked any time without your knowledge of the specific occasions, or you cannot be tracked at all.

Up until now in the UK only the police and security services have had the capability to obtain this type of location data from the mobile networks, and then only with a warrant or in an emergency. But here we have a situation where this type of information is being sold retail to anyone.