Monday, May 09, 2011

Routine Maintenance: Tracking the Trackers

Rotate your GPS tracking devices every 1000 miles for even wear.

Amplify’d from www.wired.com

How to find it? Just get under your car and look around. If you see a black box, give it a yank. If it comes free, it’s probably not factory-installed. Even if you’re not sure what a normal car underside looks like, a surveillance device is going to look out of place. While you’re at it, check the car cushions and unzip your headrests; those are

both fine places to hide a passive device.

More-recent devices not only gather your GPS location data, they send it back out to someone who may be following your movements on the internet right now. Many of them can be spliced right into your car’s electrical system. No batteries and no need for retrieval mean that your shadow can be extra-sneaky when hiding the device. The engine compartment is going to be too hot, and the trunk is basically a metal box, so you can still pretty much rule those out. Start by looking behind the console, and don’t stop until you’ve looked pretty much everywhere else.

Read more at www.wired.com