Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You By Laura M. Holson, The New York Times, October, 23, 2007 Two new questions arise, courtesy of the latest advancement in cellphone technology: Do you want your friends, family, or colleagues to know where you are at any given time? And do you want to know where Obvious benefits come to mind. Parents can take advantage of the Global Positioning System chips embodded in many cellphones to track the whereabouts of their phone-toting children. [2] And for teenagers and 20-somethings, who are fond of sharing their comings and goings on the Internet, youth-oriented services ik Loopt and Buddy Beacon are a natural next step. Sam Altman, the 22-year-old mo-founder of Loop tanford. "Two hund said. "People wao conmcer." [3] me up with the idea in early 2005 when he walked out of a lecture hall at nts all pulled out their cellphones, called someone and said, 'Where are you?" t such services point to a new truth of modern life: If G.P.S. made it harder to get lost, new cellphone vices are now making it harder to hide. "There are massive changes going on in society, particularly. ng young people who feel comfortable sharing information in a digital society," said Kevin Bankston, a "lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation based in San Francisco. "We seem to be getting into a d where people are closely watching each other," he said. "There are privacy risks we haven't begun to le with." [4] 66 e practical applications outweigh the worries for some converts. Kyna Fong, a 24-year-old Stanford te student, uses Loopt, offered by Sprint Nextel. For $2.99 a month, she can see the location of friends o have the service, represented by dots on a map on her phone, with labels identifying their names. m also see where she is. [5] t last summer she noticed on Loopt that friends she was meeting for dinner were 40 miles away, and late. Instead of waiting, Ms. Fong arranged her schedule to arrive when they did. "People don't k'Where are you?' she said. [6]

Ms. Fong can control whom she shares the service with, and if at any point she wants privacy, Ms. Fong can block access. Some people are not invited to join -- like her mother. I don't know if I'd want my mom knowing where I was all the time," she said. [7] Some situations are not so clear-cut. What if a spouse wants some time alone and turns off the service? Why on earth, their better half may ask, are they doing that? Top of Form Bottom of Form What if a boss asks an employee to use the service? [8] So far, the market for social-mapping is nascent - users number in the hundreds of thousands, industry experts estimate. But almost 55 percent of all mobile phones sold today in the United States have the technology that makes such friend-and- family-tracking services possible, according to Current Analysis, which follows trends in technology. So far, it is most popular, industry executives say, among the college But others have found different uses. Mr. Altman said one customer bought it to keep track of a parent with Alzheimer's. Helio, a mobile phone service provider that offers Buddy Beacon, said some small-business owners use it to track employees. [10] [6] 1?s Consumers can turn off their service, making them invisible to people in their social-mapping network. Still, the G.P.S. service embedded in the phone means that your whereabouts are not a

complete my

stery. "There is a Big Brother component," said Charles S. Golvin, a wireless analyst at Forrester Research. "The thinking goes that if my friends can find me, the telephone company knows my location all the time, too." [11] 66 Phone companies say they are aware of the potential problems such scrvices could cause. If a friend-finding service is viewed as too intrusive, said Mark Collins, vice president for consumer data at AT&T's wireless unit, "that is a negative for us." Loopt and similar services say they do not keep electronic records of people's whereabouts. [12] Mr. Altman of Loopt said that to protect better against unwelcome prying by, say, a former friend, Loopt users are sent text messages at random times, asking if they recognize a certain friend. If not, that person's viewing ability is disabled: [13]

Namris, a 25-year-old fheelance marketing executive in Memphis, said he uses Helio's Buddy Beacon y to keep in touch with his friend Gregory Lotz, One night when Mr. Lotz was returning from a trip, arris was happy to see his friend show up unannounced at a bar where he and some other friends had nt We had tried to reach me, but I didn't hear my phone ring," Mr. Harris said. "He just showed up hought, Wow, this is great." [14) kt never think to block Mr. Lotz, But he would think twice before inviting a girlfriend into his social- g notwork. "Most definitely a girl would ask and wonder why I was blocking her," he said. [15] L(2007, Oct 23) ucy Lost These Phones Can Find Yon. Retrieved from The New York Times: :ww.nytimes.com2007/10/23/technology/23mobile.html

Questions

1/How does Kevin Brankston view the growing access to the use of tracking devices on cell phones?

2/ what are two benefits having access to a tracking system such as Loopt?

3/In paragraph eleven, what is "Big Brother", and what does the reference to "Big Brother' mean in the reading?

4/how is the title of the reading relevant to the content?

5/What would be your reaction if your employer was considering having all the employe a tracking system as the ones described in the reading? Why?

6 / What is the main idea of the reading?

pur-new-sol

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