Sazo GPS tracker for nervous parents

Posted Jul 8, 2005, 4:02 AM ET by Marc Perton
Related entries: GPS

There’s apparently no end to the steady stream of devices that use some combination of GPS, RFID and cellphones to help nervous parents track their children. The latest, now on sale in the U.K., is the Sazo, a £100 GPS unit that sends location updates to its distributor’s server via GPRS. Parents can retrieve data via a browser or get updates by SMS. There’s also a panic button that automatically sends a text message to parents, and a deluxe version includes a full-fledged cellphone. Sounds great. Until the kid loses it. Or spends too much time indoors, and falls off the satellite’s signal. Or the server gets hacked, letting anyone get in and retrieve the location data. While parents might like the idea of a GPS tracker, in the end, they may find that just giving the kid a cellphone (even a simplified one like the Firefly) is a heckuva lot simpler.