Google Will Help You Track Your Kids
Posted by Brett Singer at 2:30 PM on February 6, 2009
Most New Yorkers of a certain age will remember this message from Channel 5 (now Fox): – “It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?”
Well, Google wants to help make sure the answer to that question is always “yes.”
Today the search giant will announce Google Latitude, a new service that allows users keep track of their friends’ locations via cell phone.
Latitude is being billed as Google’s entrance into “social-networking,” and not as a kiddie GPS. But by combining software that’s “location-aware” with a mobile phone, this announcement has potential privacy implications far beyond a Facebook “Hatching Eggs” app. (In my neighborhood, we called it “stalking.”)
The software is “opt-in”, meaning that those who want to go off the grid can do so at will. But in theory this could let parents track where their children are going without resorting to high tech spy gear.
Of course, that assumes you can use your child’s cell phone better than they can. Which is probably not the case.
What do you think? Would you use something like this to keep an eye on your child’s whereabouts? Or are kids entitled to some privacy?
Source: FT.com, ParentDish
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