For the past week I’ve been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It’s been very interesting to find out about her day. Now I’m going to tell you how I did it.
But first: my girlfriend is a journalist, I had her permission (‘In principle …’), and this was all in the name of science. You have nothing to worry about, at least not from me.
First I had to get hold of her phone. This wasn’t difficult. We live together and she has no reason not to trust me, so she often leaves it lying around. I needed it for five minutes, to register it on a website I’d been told about. It looks as if this service is mainly for tracking stock and staff movements: I’ve shown the Guardian staff that it works, but they won’t let me tell you the name of the site (I agree). I ticked the website’s terms and conditions without reading them, put in my debit card details, and bought twenty-five GSM credits for £5 plus VAT.
My girlfriend’s phone vibrated with a new text message: ‘Ben Goldacre has requested to add you to their Buddy List! To accept, simply reply to this message with “LOCATE”.’ I sent the reply. The phone vibrated again. A second text arrived: ‘WARNING: [This service] allows other people to know where you are. For your own safety make sure that you know who is locating you.’ I deleted both these text messages, and put the phone back in my girlfriend’s bag.
On the website, I see the familiar number in my list of ‘GSM devices’, and click ‘Locate’. A map appears of the area where we live, with a person-shaped blob in the middle, roughly a hundred yards from our home. The phone doesn’t make a sound. It gives no sign of what I’m doing.
I can’t quite believe my eyes. I knew the police could do this, and phone companies, but not any creepy boyfriend with five minutes’ access. There is nothing on my partner’s phone that could possibly let her know that I’m tracking her location. I set the website to record her location at regular intervals, and plot her path on the map, so I can view it at my leisure. Even with her permission, it felt very wrong.
By the time she got home, I was over-excited, and the secret lasted less than a minute. To my disappointment, she wasn’t freaked out. But then, I already knew that she hadn’t gone to her ex’s flat, and she’d only really been at work all day, apart from one trip to the bank. It felt strangely protective, looking down on her, following her silently. If there’s anyone who might want to track you, and they’ve had access to your phone, call your phone company, create havoc, and make them find out if there’s a trace on your phone.