Phone Locator, Monitoring, and Spy Apps
Text Notes on Various Related Apps
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cerberus anti theft LSDroid no monthly or yearly fees, just a one-time payment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Family Tracker Fibercode auto start. breadcrumbs. no sms monitor ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Google Latitude ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ instamapper ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LockItTight for Android Timeon Technologies LLC $24/yr or free version ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lookout Lookout Mobile Security ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Life360 Family Locator Life360 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mobile Phone Spy Phone Development $1 a day ($365/yr ouch!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mobile Defense maybe company is out of business. was a free beta ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mobistealth Mobistealth.com Mega expensive over $100/yr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phone Monitor geosafetynet Too damn expensive! $72/yr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SMS SPY GPS Tracker SmartMobileSoft not enough reviews. no web interface. doesnt auto start after reboot. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SMS Tracker Gizmoquip has an undisclosed monthly fee ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ StealthNanny Your Teen Monitor ABC Solutions $10/yr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SMS Spy Trackq Mobile Systems has an undisclosed monthly fee $20/mo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spy Phone Phone Tracker SpyPhone.com - Spy Phone Labs LLC $19.99/month ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Seek Droid / SeekDroid AntiTheft & * Security GT Media, LLC $5. looks like a good app https://seekdroid.com/v2/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tasker * Crafty Apps $2. like a toolbox that lets you make ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tex2Utils / Text tracker 2 / Text tracker elite DevFo forwards txt msgs to gmail. banned from gplay. works good. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WhereGuard Beta The Better App $4/mo or $48 a year (too expensive) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WaveSecure McAfee $20/yr, only lets you make 4 location requests a day ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Secret SMS Replicator DLP Mobile com.dlp.SMSReplicatorSecret / see: Secret SMS Replicator by DLP Mobile ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- see also: Secret SMS Replicator by DLP Mobile
- see also: Text Tracker Elite by DevFo
Google Latitude
The service is voluntary (each partner has to agree to share their present and future locations with each individual partner). The tracked person can turn tracking off and on at any time.
The location is sampled about every 15 minutes, and on the map you see a spot saying "person Y, 3 minutes ago". Only the most recent location is shown: you don't see where the person has been in the past, although of course you could keep looking every 15 minutes. If the phone is turned off or the GPS is underground, the tag can say "person Y, 5 hours ago" at your last known location.
Google keeps a person's location history in their Google account, accessible only to the tracked person and nobody else. You can see where you've been in the past week on the map, a few stats like how much time you spend at work in a given week, etc. The history can be deleted manually.
It works with Android and iPhone smartphones. To be effective, it requires some data transfer over the cellular network, maybe a few megabytes a month.
Google also uses the data to profile you for advertising and other purposes.
- Open the Google Maps app on your phone or tablet.
- Press the Menu button and select Join Latitude. If this option doesn't appear, choose More, and then Labs. You will find the Latitude option here.
- Contacts in your phone that have Latitude enabled will populate Latitude's Suggested Friends area. If none appear, simply press the Add button up top (shown in the picture below) to search for friends in your contacts or by e-mail address.
- Adjust your location (manually or automatically) and check-in style through the larger button near the top as shown below.
- When going out to your first Google Place, you can "Check in," similar to Foursquare or Gowalla. To do this, press the check mark near the top right corner.
- There are additional settings that can be adjusted for each person you add to Latitude. Just select your friend's name and you'll get options to adjust update times or the location you share, send the person a notification, or remove the person from Latitude.
External Resources
Best app for tracking kids? This has an excellent discussion from a parent trying to monitor a troubled child, some opinions, and many good suggestions on available apps.
- Android Forums > Android Discussion > Android Applications > Best app for tracking kids?
Google Latitude is a location-aware mobile app developed by Google. Latitude allows a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location. Via their own Google Account, the user's cell phone location is mapped on Google Maps.
Seek Droid
Seek Droid looks like the best value when it comes to live tracking and anti theft, similar to BlackBerry Protect. One concern is that it is not clear if it would be incompatible with apps like Text Tracker 2 or Secret SMS Replicator. Also, developers have not responded to presales questions about SMS monitoring.
