By Deirdre Healey
The Hamilton Spectator
Mischievous teenagers beware.
An Ancaster company is using high technology to put a serious
crimp in your social lives. Global Positioning Systems is
going to let parents know when their child is late, plays
hooky or sneaks out of the house.
The 24-hour-a day service is going to cost just $200 a year.
Vince Poloniato, president of the Ancaster company Track
'Em, has recently turned his attention to capitalizing on
parents' need to keep a close watch on their children or anyone
else.
He began marketing the service three years ago to employers
as a way of keeping track of staff taking long lunches or
using company vehicles outside of work. But over the past
year, more parents have been ordering the service and his
clientele has grown to 3,000, he said.
The tracking device, which can be planted in vehicles or
accessed through cellphones with GPS service, allows the user
to pinpoint a person's location by logging into the company's
website. The location can be displayed on a map or by address.
Information is updated every two minutes.
The user can view a timeline of where the person has been
all day and even access a history of where the person has
been months earlier.
The user can also set 'fences' around certain locations,
which enables them to be notified when the person they are
monitoring crosses over the line.
This service is especially useful for parents, said Poloniato,
who uses his service to track his 17-year-old son, his wife
and his employees.
"If my son doesn't cross the fence around our house
by 11 p.m., I will know about it," he said.
The service also brings comfort to worried parents.
Fences can be placed around a child's school or a friend's
house and the parent is alerted when their child arrives at
a destination.
Jeff Paikin's 10-year-old daughter doesn't leave to catch
the school bus without the cellphone tucked into her knapsack.
Each morning Paikin receives a notice at work that his daughter
has made it to school safely.
"It gives me peace of mind," said the father of
three. "I wish I could inject this device into all three
of my daughters. It's better to do that than to see their
faces on a milk carton."
But Paikin admits his daughter's current excitement about
being tracked could change once she is a teenager.
Marvin Ryder, marketing professor with McMaster University,
said the service can be valuable, but raises concerns around
privacy rights.
"A parent has every right to know where their child
is, but that right becomes questionable when it involves teenagers,"
he said.
Ryder anticipates the service will lead to children taking
their parents to court over privacy issues.
The development of GPS, which was initially used by the military,
into a tracking service for consumers is "a natural progression,"
Ryder said, and society will work out boundaries as the service
becomes more popular.
Poloniato's product is currently distributed by Telus as
part of a cell phone plan, and within weeks, 1,000 dealerships
across Canada will start offering the Tracklight -- a device
the size of a chocolate bar that can be placed in your vehicle
-- as an added feature when buying a car.
For teenagers, the expansion of Poloniato's business comes
as bad news.
"That has serious potential to screw me over,"
said Sam Preston, 15.
Lying to your parents and sneaking around behind their backs
is the fun and exciting part of being a teenager, said Debbie
Oldes, 14.
"Our parents got to do it so we should be able to do
it too."
But like many teenagers, Oldes is already thinking one step
ahead of her parents.
"I guess we could just turn our cellphones off."
dhealey@thespec.com
905-526-3468 |
The Hamilton Spectator - You'll always know where your kids are
