When most people hear about cell phone tracker software, the first thing that comes to mind is that it should be illegal to track someone’s phone without them knowing. It seems like a huge invasion of privacy to be able to spy on someone’s phone and see everything they’re doing, who they’re talking to, what pictures they’re taking, and their GPS location. Well, it seems like an invasion of privacy until you’re the one who wants to spy on someone.

So the real question is, could someone be using a cell phone tracker to spy on you without your consent? And isn’t that illegal?

Turns out there was actually an article in the Wall Street Journal about this same issue.

According to WSJ.com, The FBI has been using a cell phone tracker (called a Stingray) to track people’s whereabouts by phone for years.

For more than a year, federal authorities pursued a man they called simply “the Hacker.” Only after using a little known cellphone-tracking device—a stingray—were they able to zero in on a California home and make the arrest.

Stingrays are designed to locate a mobile phone even when it’s not being used to make a call. [...]

Stingrays are one of several new technologies used by law enforcement to track people’s locations, often without a search warrant. These techniques are driving a constitutional debate about whether the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, but which was written before the digital age, is keeping pace with the times.

[...]

A stingray works by mimicking a cellphone tower, getting a phone to connect to it and measuring signals from the phone. It lets the stingray operator “ping,” or send a signal to, a phone and locate it as long as it is powered on, according to documents reviewed by the Journal. The device has various uses, including helping police locate suspects and aiding search-and-rescue teams in finding people lost in remote areas or buried in rubble after an accident.

So the question of whether or not a cell phone tracker like the Stingray is illegal is really up to interpretation. If law enforcement uses it to gain evidence to be used in court, they would have to obtain a court order to prove they used the evidence legally.

But what about the average, every day person? Is it illegal to use a cell phone tracker software to spy on your kids? Or your spouse?

At this time, it is not illegal for you to use a cell phone tracker — IF you install it on a cell phone that you own. If you install it on a phone that you don’t own, however, then you are doing so at your own risk. If you get caught (assuming the person can prove that it was you who installed it), then you could get in trouble.

Plus with current cell phone tracker technology, hardware like the stingray isn’t available to the average person. That means you have to get cell phone tracking software and install it on the phone. You have to have physical access to the phone to install it — so you can’t just use a tracker to spy on someone just by knowing their phone number. So at this point, you’re fairly limited as to who you can really spy on. Which also means if you suspect someone is using a cell phone tracker to spy on you, it has to be someone who is close to you. (Or it could be the FBI. )

Cell phone tracker technology is a bit of a catch-22. If you have children, then of course monitoring software is a great tool to have. It’s also great if something horrible were to happen and you need to track them by GPS. But, if you’re an adult and your partner doesn’t trust you and is using spyware to keep track of you, or if you’re a criminal and the police are using it to track your whereabouts . . . I think we can all agree that we would hope that kind of thing wouldn’t happen to us. At that point most of us would agree that it was against privacy laws and shouldn’t be allowed.

So where do you draw the line? I think it goes back to the law that states you can’t use cell phone tracker software on a phone if you don’t own it. After all, the majority of us really hope that our loved ones trust us enough to not try and track us by our phones. And it’s relatively reassuring that we can’t be monitored by someone who isn’t close to us.

If you’re thinking about using cell phone monitoring software on someone in your life, then you have to be the one who decides whether or not you can live with the consquences. This includes both positive and negative information. You really don’t know what kind of information you can uncover by tracking someone’s phone. You could find out they aren’t doing anything to betray your trust, or you could find out that they’re doing everything you suspect them of doing.

You also have to decide whether or not you can live with it if they were ever to find out that you were using cell phone tracker software on them. The chances of you getting caught are pretty slim, but if you let it slip that you know information that you only could have gotten from their phone, the consequences could be huge.

So even though cell phone tracker software isn’t illegal, you still have to decide if you really are prepared for the fallout of using it. Many of us think the benefits outweigh the risks, but if you really just don’t want to know the truth, then cell phone spyware might not be right for you.

Have you seen this video about Cell Phone Tracker software? It’s a news report from MyFoxLA:

When you look at it, it’s pretty crazy how much information you can get with an undetectable piece of spyware, isn’t it? Some of the more powerful trackers actually will let you listen into phone calls or the phone’s surroundings, effectively turning the cell phone into a bug.

However, for most people, the price of that type of cell phone tracker will be too much to justify. They can cost anywhere from $400 and up per year, which isn’t surprising considering you’re basically following the person around and listening in to everything they do.

If you don’t need the listening capabilities, I would go for a less costly tracker software. Most of them out there now will let you do everything besides listen in, and you can get them for less than $15 a month.

Now for the bigger question: Do you suspect someone is using a cell phone tracker to listen in to YOUR phone conversations? There aren’t many ways to find out, especially since advanced spy software is designed to be stealthy. Instead, one of the best ways to figure out if someone is spying on you is to really listen carefully to the things that they say when you’re around. Eventually, most people who are spying will end up letting some piece of information slip. They’ll accidentally mention something that you know they couldn’t know about unless they were listening. Or they will act strange and like something is wrong, even when you know that they have no reason to act that way.

Because cell phone trackers are undetectable, it’s the user who is going to give them away, not the software. Which is also an important lesson if you’re the one who is wanting to spy on someone: Make sure you’re careful to not act any differently once you start getting information. You don’t want the person you’re spying on to figure out what you’re doing, right? And you’re much more likely to get yourself caught than the software is.

What should you do if you think someone is spying on your phone? Since the cell phone tracker software is designed so that it doesn’t show up on your programs list, you can’t just uninstall it. Especially since you aren’t 100% sure that it’s there in the first place, right? So you have no way of knowing what kind of software it is, or what it’s tracking. So what do you do?

You can perform a hard reset of your phone. That reverts your phone back to factory settings, which erases anything that was installed after you activated it. That’s okay if you don’t have programs or downloads that aren’t backed up. You might want to go ahead and back everything up (like pictures, apps, etc) so that you can reinstall them after the reset.

Keep in mind that cell phone tracker software is easy to install. So if someone is using it to spy on you, they could always reinstall it in just a few seconds after they notice they’re not getting the information from the phone anymore. And you’ll have no way of knowing whether or not the reset stopped the problem, or if they’ve reinstalled it. Which means that you could end up doing a factory reset for nothing.

If you really suspect that someone is spying on you, then your best recourse is to either confront them, or do something to trap them. Or stop doing things that you want to hide from them, and then it won’t matter if they’re spying on you or not.