How to Track a Cell Phone with GPS

Over the last few years, there has been a significant rise in the sale of GPS tracking devices. Even though critics have been highlighting the issues associated with GPS cell phone tracking for quite some time now, the fact of the matter remains that there do exist some circumstances wherein phone tracking comes handy in day-to-day life.

Before you move on to the details, you need to understand that determining the location of an individual by tracking the location of his cell phone and determining the whereabouts of the person by tracing the phone number are two different concepts.

We will tell you how it is possible to track the cell phone location by resorting to GPS. If you want to track cell phone location by phone number or trace a call to find who the person is, you should opt for reverse phone number lookup.

Global Positioning System, abbreviated as GPS, is a navigation system wherein the exact location of a GPS receiver is determined by computing the data received from satellites. A GPS-enabled cell phone doesn't just help in locating people in the case of an emergency, but also makes it easy to retrieve the handset if you lose it or it gets stolen.

If you intend to track cell phone location from computers, you have the option of resorting to one of the numerous websites which facilitate such services. You just have to register to one such website, feed the required information, and log onto it every time you want to avail the service.

You won't have to download any separate software, as the location of the cell phone will be displayed on a map given on the website itself.

With the launch of Google Latitude, it is also possible to track cell phone location with Google Earth. You need to create an account with Google and add the cell phone number you want to track to their database. You will get a text message asking for confirmation. Once you approve it, you will be able to track the cell phone on the Google Earth application.

If the cell phone that you want to track doesn't have GPS, you can resort to some GPS tracking software to get your task done. For this, you will have to download the software onto the handset. Going a step ahead and opting for GPS real time tracking system will make your task a lot easier by facilitating continuous updates about the cell phone location.

The location of the device will be determined by the process of trilateration. It's a scientifically proven fact that it is possible to determine the location of an object if you know the distance of this object from three different points. In this case, the satellites act as three different points and determine the longitude and latitude of the receiver.

In GPS cell phone tracking, the GPS-enabled handset acts as a receiver and helps in determining the location. A similar method is used in tracking GSM and CDMA handsets, the only difference being that the cell phone towers act as the three points from where the distance is calculated instead of satellites.

As far as cell phone tracking and privacy issues are concerned, the onus is on the law enforcement agencies to come up with necessary steps to ensure that nobody resorts to unethical use of this service.