Back in the good/bad old days, if you were suspicious of your spouse's activities, you had to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars on private investigators. Er...so I'm told.
Today, a new feature from US car manufacturer General Motors can do it for just 12c a day!
The new service is called Family Link, and allows owners of OnStar-equipped vehicles from Chevrolet, GMC, Buick and Cadillac to track a family member through the OnStar website, and receive email and text alerts when the vehicle arrives at a location or at a specific time.
OnStar vice president of subscriber services, Joanne Finnom: "We're depending on subscribers to tell other family members that they've enabled the service on the vehicle." (Oh, sure - like, honey, I'm just going to spy on you today! Hope that's ok.) She says Family Link is something subscribers asked for, and last year the company got 4,500 customers to test the service. Family Link was a hit, with Finnom saying the testers "told us it provided them peace of mind by staying connected to their family when they’re on the road." Riiiight. So, nothing whatsoever to do with checking to see which motel they may have pulled into, when they were supposedly at their yoga
class...Family Link is being pitched to parents who want to keep tabs on their kids, but it could be used to track anyone driving an OnStar-equipped vehicle enrolled in the service. But with all location tracking services, the privacy and security implications are murky at best. Parker Higgins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "It's troubling. Any time a new service like this is introduced you have to think beyond what's described in the press release. It's important to remember that you can provide a service that is valuable and useful and still be violating people's privacy."
OnStar will start sending invitations to an initial batch of customers this month, with more going out in June, before the service rolls out across US later this year.
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