I just saw an online ad for a little GPS chip you can hide in a car (presumably yours). The chip lets you track the car’s location via an app.
What’s the purpose of this?
My first thought is that it’s an anti-theft device. If your car is stolen, you can tell the police where it is.
My second thought is that its real purpose is to spy on your children or spouse. You can use the chip to track where they’re driving when they think they’re not being watched.
My third thought is that while the device is supposedly being sold to put in your car, the real reason is you can hide it in another person’s car that you are stalking.
Then my brain stopped wanting to think about this topic. Have I hit the nail on the head yet? Or are there other even worse possibilities for this device that haven’t occurred to me?
I respect your wants and needs PastTense, but that ignores the OP’s mention that it’s being sold as a hidden device. Although that could be the OP or myself reading too much into it.
Otherwise your suggestion is perfectly fine, although there are a lot easier / cheaper GPS / Bluetooth / Cellular / Etc options for legitimate use.
Rental car places, leasing locations, Turo renters would all use these to track their vehicles. Every thing the OP said is on the table.People track packages, baggage, spouses, and more all the time. Just more technology oriented than slumping in a car seat during a stake-out and eating bad takeout food.
Any smartphone can remember where you left your car. Even if the car is completely tech-free.
Like this: Park the car. Push the button on the phone that says “Remember this location”. Leave the car and go do [whatever] for [however ] long, completely forgetting where you left the car. Finish doing [whatever]. Push the button on the phone for “Lead me to the saved location”. See your car when you get there.
Now that sure doesn’t track a moving car, or a moving person. And that’s where the trackers come in. You can install them on cars you want to follow. Or into phones you want to follow if you can get hands-on with the phone while it’s unlocked. Maybe you tell the car or phone owners/users what you’re doing, and maybe you don’t.
And yes, the main use case is monitoring people who don’t know they’re being monitored. Maybe for nice reasons (parental concern?) but usually for not-nice reasons.
[aside/rant]
IMO parents tracking children is a really bad idea. Young kids who grow up with a vid camera in the corner of their room and eventually a tracker pinned to their clothes and later installed in their phones become adults who are inured to the idea of Big Brother constantly watching.
We should not train a generation or two that that is an acceptable thing. In fact it’s an outrage.
Agree. If you can’t trust your kids or your spouse, there are much, much deeper issues.
A dog is a bit different. I don’t have a tracker on them, but I do have collars for them that will vibrate and also can shock. The shock range is adjustable 1-100. I have them on 10. I can feel the shock on my bare skin, but it’s hardly painful.
They also have a brilliant LED light you can turn on remotely.
I see the collars as nothing more than a way to tap them on the shoulder and get their attention.
My junior cat wears two tracker tags (different brands, one relies on nearby app users, the other uses Google Find My Device) on his harness, along with his conventional ID tag and he is chipped. He does have a history of walkabouts, and after the time he was gone for four days, we decided that our peace of mind demanded the ability to find him if it gets to be too long since one of us saw him.
It doesn’t actually have to be a trust issue. I wouldn’t buy one of these trackers, but I did have my husband share his phone location with me. Not because I don’t trust him- but because he has a long history of not telling me he’s working late and he often can’t answer the phone and I got tired of wondering when he was and what to do about dinner. At least now I can see that he’s an hour away and the car is moving.
True. There are legit reasons people might want to knowingly share their location with others. I personally haven’t had the need since such capability became commonplace, but I lead a rather simple life. But I could imagine myself wanting to participate in co-tracking with a spouse / SO for example.
But there are rather fewer legit reasons to track someone without their knowledge. And if someone was doing such covert tracking it’s rather likely that the trackee would not be happy once they found out about it.
It’s the sneaky part that’s the problem. Whether the trackee is untrustworthy, or the tracker is untrusting/overcontrolling, something is rotten in their Denmark.
While I’ve never looked, I’ve never seen that button on my phone. I’m seeing internet posts suggesting Google Maps has a way to do it, either manually or automatically when it notices you’re now walking instead of driving. But I don’t see it.
Yeah, I can understand that. Thought about doing that with my wife. For both of us.
We drive icy curvy mountain roads. Much of it though is out of cell phone communication.
We do a good job of just keeping in touch. Pretty regular schedules too.
I’m guessing it’s in there somewhere. But I rarely use the GPS or maps on my phone. Certainly not enough to be familiar with any non-obvious features. But a ‘save this location’ button would be nice as a widget that you could just tap from the home screen. I imagine it would be especially nice for people that spend a lot of time in downtown type areas where they could be parked several blocks away from where they’re going.
I think the device is totally fine as a hidden anti-theft device and as a device to keep track of your teenage driver who, I assume, is either driving my car or a car I pretty much paid for myself. Also, teenagers are still minors, and I’m responsible for keeping track of them.
Sorry I was a bit too telegraphic / metaphoric there. Your phone has the inherent capability to do what I said: store and return to locations. My underlying point was that finding your parked car doesn’t rely on anything in the car, such as the tracking devices the OP was talking about: your phone all by itself is the only hardware you need.
But … you need an app for that. Which are readily available. Or as you both mentioned, the various map apps like Google or Waze (now owned by Google) or Apple Maps that nearly everyone already has installed on their phone usually have features for that purpose if you dig a bit to find them.
Sorry to be confusing.
ETA: If you have a late model “smart” car, it knows where it is and on shutdown transmits that location to the car-branded app you probably already have on your phone. Which can then be used later to lead you back to your car. Or find it if somebody steals it.
I’ve read that thieves will go through parking lots and put trackers on desirable cars so that they can steal them later when they are in a more isolated area. I’ve also read about AirTags being hidden in cars, but that’s usually by amateurs. AirTags aren’t good for secret tracking since the driver will eventually get a notification on their phone that an unknown AirTag is traveling with them. But I would guess one of the top reasons is to track a spouse that is suspected of cheating.