Cellphone tracking services: Friend finder or Big Brother?

Loopt, has more than 1 million users and is one of the most popular services to allow people to track their friends via their smart phones. And with more cellphones now equipped with GPS, other services such as Google Latitude are collecting location data from scores of users and broadcasting that information through phone networks or the Internet.

Such tracking services offer a great way for people stay connected – and can be a boon for parents – but their proliferation also has privacy advocates biting their nails. As companies forge into largely uncharted areas of tracking and recording customer locations, many worry that consumers won’t be able to ensure that their private information – such as their whereabouts on a given day – is being safeguarded, especially from advertisers.

“How are we going to get all the benefits that come from doing geo-location without sacrificing people’s privacy?” asks Lauren Gelman, executive director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS).