Police Track Cell Phone to Catch Perp. In Denver

When is it okay for the Police to Resort to Tracking Date from cell phones of citizens?

Two men point a gun at the worker of a Lakewood convenient store and told him to empty the cash register. The owner gave them the money, but the robbers made the mistake of also taking the victim’s iPhone.

The next day, a team of local cops and Denver cops had caught one of the men by tracking the iPhone. The cell phone provider AT&T released the information to the cops as to updates to the iPhone location.

In this case the owner of the iPhone, the man robbed, gave permission to the police to track the location of his phone. The problem becomes what process do police need to go through to be allowed to track cell phones.

The Supreme Court Ruled on a vote 5 to 4 that police tracking people via their real time data from their cell phones without a search warrant was a potential violation of our fourth amendment right.

Cell phone providers can provide historical data and real time data, so should they be able to provide certain data and not others? None of these questions have easy answers. Everyone has an opinion about it. Here is one:

"Cell providers can locate every smartphone at any given moment. The question becomes who's privy to that information and under what circumstances," said Tom Raynes, executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council. "Because you're giving that information to the cell provider — a third party — when you buy the phone, does that invalidate a right to privacy?"

No one really has made a decision about what circumstances are okay and what situation it is unacceptable for police to check up on. In the case of the robbery, it seems like a pretty obvious answer. Other cases will not be as cut and dry. Police everywhere go by different rules, if they follow any, but there is no national standard.

Obtain cell phones data has become an initial step in many investigations, said Lakewood Police Department spokesman Steve Davis.

"Every law enforcement agency I'm aware of uses this kind of technology to locate people," Davis said. "We have technology available to us today that certainly wasn't available just a few years ago."

Even within different departments of Denver there are different methods of approaching cell phone tracking. Nationally there is no protocol, but one can imagine how much it varies.

This will be an issue to keep an eye on. How much do you want cops being able to poke into your lives without a search warrant or even probably cause?

Cell Phone Tracking Proved Useful

Cell phone tracking have a big yes tick for one mother whose daughter was two hours late coming back from Miami. For a long time there has been back and forth between the positives and negatives of tracking cell phones with safety concerns pushing for it and worries about it being invasive to privacy holding it back. For one mother it turned out to be a huge positive after she worried about whereabouts of her daughter who was over two hours late coming back from Miami late on a mid-July night. The girl’s mother recalled that less than a week beforehand her daughter had signed up to a service at LocateUrCell.com, which claimed to be able to quickly track down the location of the cell phone. After a few questions, the site’s owner Frank Rabbito said he had tracked the cell phone’s position to Alligator Alley. She was all okay and it turned out that she had just run out of gas. “There was no lights; it was dark and she was in a dead cell zone” said Rabbito. The girl was just in one of those unlucky flukes where everything that could go wrong did, but she was fine and with the help of LocateUrCell was tracked down, which meant no more worry for her mother.

The website (LocateUrCell.com) was launched in mid-July by Frank Rabbito and he said that the goal of it was not to make money, which he made enough of from his last career, but to help find people when they are lost and vulnerable. The idea for the site originated for Rabbito when he was talking one night with his wife about public notifications for missing seniors. Rabbito instantly thought “there’s got to be a way to find these people” and then followed the discovery that 98 percent of people had a cell phone and it might be possible to combine that in some way with tracking them.


He started LocateUrCell with the help of a programmer, Dan Grable and they quickly set about coming over the obstacles like negotiating with the networks to gain access to them to gain the information required to track the phones. Most use GPS to track the devices to within a few feet, but with Verizon they use triangulation technology which is a little less precise. People can sign up online and then track their phones on the website. The best thing about the project is that it is aimed at not purely pushing a profit – 40% of the proceeds go to charities meaning not only is it helping find lost and vulnerable people but it also helps the wider community. It has already had success in finding not only people, but used as a tool for finding misplaced cell phones as Corena Salazar found when she lost her phone at her grocery store!


The future looks good for LocateUrCell with the initial aims to be to break even and then start distributing the proceeds to charities.

Cell Phone Tracking By Number

When you think for a while, you will surely come up with at least several ideas why you could need to track a cell phone by its number. Or you may already have an important reason in your mind. Just to give you an example, three weeks ago my aunt have been receiving strange calls around 10-11PM from an unknown cell phone number. Since she usually goes to bed at 9PM, she never had an opportunity to pick up her phone check who's that person on the line. It become really annoying for her, especially, that each time she tried to call back the cellphone number, nobody ever answered. She was pretty upset due to all of this, and when she asked me for an advice, I quickly referred her a cellphone tracking.

At first she didn't want to use such services, since she thought these were not legal. I had to inform her that you have the full right to know who is calling you. Especially in this case, when the cell phone calls were really annoying and became something harassing. Second thing which my aunt didn't like was the small fee, which is usually charged for reversing a cellphone number. I had to explain her that these few bucks are a pretty fair price for a peace of mind.

This was my aunt history, but you certainly may have different reasons to look for cell phone tracking by number. To sum up the few words I wrote above: such cell phone lookups are completely legal and you don't have to worry you will get into trouble by using it. Second very important thing is that there is no chance that the holder of cellphone you're tracking will figure out that you're checking his cell phone. Cellphone tracking services offer you 100% privacy guarantee which means it is impossible to reveal your personal details to cellphone number owner. Regarding the small fee, you shouldn't complain about it, although there are a lot of "free" services, you will get any good results with them. And believe me, the results from fee based phone tracking are well worth the tiny price they cost.

If you're still worried about money, remember to always check the service provider's policy on moneybacks. Just make sure, that in the case you are not satisfied with the results of the search they will refund you your money. Playing with charge backs can be really pain in the neck, so as always, before paying for anything, check to terms and conditions of your chosen service plan.