Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

Tompkins Sheriff Arrests Man After Tracking Him on His Cell Phone

January 25, 2010

Ithaca Journal (Dryden, New York) - A Town of Dryden man tracked on his cell phone's GPS while talking to sheriff's deputies was charged Sunday with violating a court order to stay away from a past domestic partner in the Town of Lansing.

Tompkins County Sheriff's deputies charged Joshua W. Reeves, 23, of 27 Pinckney Road, Town of Dryden, with criminal contempt in the second degree. The arrest stemmed from an investigation into an allegation that Reeves had violated a court order.

As deputies attempted to locate Reeves, he traveled throughout Tompkins and Cortland Counties in a vehicle, calling the Sheriff's Office and threatening to commit suicide. Deputies contacted his cell phone carrier, who tracked him via his phone's GPS system, which ultimately led to Reeves being taken into custody several hours later ...

RFID-Enabled Phones Could Let Credit Card Companies Track Users

June 24, 2009

Wired - An Ericsson executive says all new mobile phones sold in 2010 will include an RFID chip that will allow owners to open their car or house door with their phone. A handy feature, no doubt, for some people. But the executive says the chip might also be used by credit card companies to track the location of cardholders to cut down on fraud.

Håkan Djuphammar, vice president of systems architecture for Ericsson, speaking at a conference in Stockholm this week, said credit card companies could make use of mobile user location data and IP mapping to determine if the owner of a card is in the same location where a card transaction is taking place.

“In some countries there’s a lot of fraud with credit cards so therefore it’s in the interest of the credit card issuer to be able to match the position of the phone that belongs to the person who has a credit card,” he reportedly said.

He said the chips could also be used to create real-time traffic maps and updates by determining the speed of a driver passing by mobile phone base stations.

Djuphammar said selling the information of mobile phone users to credit card companies and others would be a “win win” situation for all parties concerned.

“That is a typical ‘win win’ where the operator share their assets/knowledge through a broker, and the GPS company can sell a service to the end user. The end user wins, the GPS service provider wins, the broker provider wins and the operator wins,” he said.

Djuphammar did not mention whether users will be able to turn the chip off or otherwise opt out of the sale of their data.