Track my son's Droid Razr from my iPhone

I know this may sound harsh but it will be easier if you resolve your trust issues with your son. Other than that check to see if your provider can provide the service there's a fee involved. Latitude works best on both phones but needs user consent via email. Latitude for iphone is rather slow and doesn't update regularly enough for me.

 

If you are both on verizon... verizon offers a family locator service.

 

Doesn't the location service require the uses consent for a location trace, or at the very least it notifies the user.

To the OP, you aren't going to find one and you should really rethink your strategy here. I guarantee you that you will lose this fight. Kids today know exactly what these phones are capable of, and it will be pretty obvious if you give them a new smartphone and immediately seem to know everywhere they go and everything you do. They will find a way around the tracking, or just turn the phone off or leave it behind if they do something they want to hide. This is a battle that has been waged since the dawn of time, and the kids always win.

And ultimately, the more you try to secretly keep tabs on him the more he's going to want to keep things secret. Even if he doesn't have anything to hide, if he knows you're going behind his back to spy on him the more he'll work to hide everything from you.

 

Hi!

The OP asked for advice on an app, nothing else. Nobody knows the particular circumstances involved, nor should the OP be made to disclose them. Provided any solutions provided are legal and above-board it's not anyone else's concern.

I'll also move this to Android Applications, as it's a general app inquiry rather than device-specific.

Thanks.

 

this is nice of you. To the kind ops/moderators.. thank you guys for making life simple. And as for the guy with the question... im bar none but im sure both phones would have to support gps... im sure what you are looking for would be a program for use to find a cheating girlfriend of something... it would do the kind of work you are asking for.. but me im no help as this.. Im not sure what your son is doing but if you think it's harmful then you have every right to take control of your household.

 

thats not really true anymore... most kids aren't as computer savvy as you think.. I was an exception... most kids can't even use google... what makes you think they would be smart enough to use a task manager? Btw... this comes from a 25 y/o.. besides... MOST of these types of programs HIDE themselves even if they were to get smart enough.

 

Lookout is an antivirus app but also has a locator function which when you set it up you can access from any computer. Life 360 family locator works on both android and iPhone read the description it gives you better idea about it https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.life360.android.safetymapd

 

There are numerous apps that let you track one phone from another. As far as I know (which include 15 minutes of googling the subject), there are no apps that let you do it secretively. For VERY good reason. Would you want somebody else to be able to secretly track your sister/daughter/girlfriend/wife/etc without their knowledge? The closest the OP can get is the ability to get a location fix whenever they want, and the phone is on, with a notification about it on his son's phone.

And assuming that the OP's son is a minor, he absolutely has a right to track his phone. He doesn't have the ability to do it secretly.

What tech savvy do you need to turn off the phone or leave it behind if you don't want to be tracked? The best, most secretive tracking software wouldn't do you any good if the phone isn't on and isn't with the kid.

And never mind the fact that I'm 26, I teach 18-20 year olds at my university (I'm a teaching assistant), I know several middle and high school teachers (tell them most students don't know how to Google and they'll laugh in you face and regale you with wonderful stories of obvious cheating), and that the curriculum in my middle school 12-13 years ago included how to use a search engine (I miss dogpile). You're right, and I'm wrong. Kids these days don't know anything about these new fangled phones. I'm sure the OP's son will be totally oblivious.

 

How old is your son?

 

People it's a question of an app not of his personal life or what everyone's opinion is on his situation.

 

How about where's my droid in stealth mode? That should not give a message when you ask for location via sms. Also: maybe you can tell it not to show up in the app tray. You can also password protect it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alienmanfc6.wheresmyandroid

 

yes as stated above, just provide apps to the person. Though illegal for adult to track another adult without concent, if your son is a minor im not sure if you still need their concent. At any rate: stated above about lookout https://www.mylookout.com/features tells you more about the service. I downloaded it once incase my phone was lost I could see who had it. If they terminated the app though it was no use, if they shut off the phone, it was no good. If i remember right it can send out a loud siren to the phone you are tracking as well as gps coords.

as most phones have come with a task killer, pending on the age of your son, they know how to use that. Even opening up all the apps to access the app they want they can come accross that. Unless rooted, though I know nothing about rooted, I don't know if there is a way to hide an app from the phone. Id be interested in that as well (hiding apps)

 

There are hide apps but they usually have to kill it to hide it.

 

After the Mod stepped in to mention that, nobody has brought up the OP's or his son's personal life or their opinion of the situation (I made sure to limit my previous comment [after the mod's] on the technical aspects of what he's trying to do).

I don't believe you can hide apps on an unrooted phone running the stock launcher. Other launchers (launcher pro I believe, definitely others) can let you hide an app from the app tray, and I believe there are other options if the phone is rooted. However, it will probably show up elsewhere, like in the running apps/services menu or if he's using some form of task manager (like system panel).

It just occurred to me that that you should be able to do this with Tasker as well, and that will probably be one of the most innocuous way of doing it. I don't use tasker so I'm not 100% on that, but you can look into it.

And again, if he thinks he's being tracked on the phone and wants to hide something, he'll just turn the phone off or not take it with him.

 

Not going to give you parenting advice because that's not why you're posting. I will, however, tell you what I did with my teens. I installed Life360 on our phones and told them it was there. What this app does; allows families to stay in touch with one another via GPS. It has a "check in" feature that will let everyone check in with one another. It shows you where on the map that there are convicted sex offenders and shows you where emergency services are located (police stations, fire stations, hospitals etc).

The check in feature is nice because when they do check in, it will send you a text message and an email showing you their location. If my kids do not check in when they are supposed to and do not have a reasonable explanation, then they either lose their phones for awhile or they get grounded. If they turn off the GPS or uninstall Life360, they lose their phones permanently. The other good thing about the check in feature is if something really did happen to them, you have a log of their last known location in case you have to call the police.

Hope this helps somewhat.

 

That is why I restated that

 

I think it is really interesting to read how you handle this.
I work a lot with children and I am baffled at how many of them have smartphones at a very early age. It's good parents keep up with this and use the tech to their advantage and keep everyone safe.

I hope the OP will find a solution that works for him.

 

I like NoNameFace's solution. There's another app called Wheres My Droid. It's like "find my iPhone" or whatever it's called on iOS. You can get the current location either by using a web browser (this is discreet). Or you can text the phone and it will send you the location as a map link and gps coordinates as a text. After a relative was recently in a nearly fatal single car accident and was in and out of consciousness for five hours before anyone found him-- I set this up on my phone and wrote down instructions for my parents (I'm in my mid 20s) in case, God forbid, they ever need to use it. I also set it up on my dad's phone for the same reason. The rest of my family has iPhones and they have it set up on theirs where they could be found, too.

 

Would the Backitude app help here? It does allow one user (once they have a friend connect) to send a push update request to find out where the recipient is.

 

Another app that lets you "check-in" to places is Foursquare. And they could maybe convince their friends to join. Its a social network where you check-in to places to tell your friends where you are, share pictures of the place, read tips from other users on what's good about a certain place and leave your own. If you get your own foursquare and add them on it, you can see the places they check into.

With kids nowadays being social networking addicts, I'd think this could be a viable solution. I know my friend, her sister, and her son I think are on foursquare and they like got addicted and check-in where ever they go, since you can also share your check-ins to Facebook.

 

There are a lot of applications like Wheres My Droid, GPS tracking Pro, Lookout, Droid Secure, Life 360.to monitor kids.

 

Live tracker apps drain the battery fast! Like in 3 or 4 hours from chock full to completely empty! So even if the app is well hidden on a phone, it's effect on the battery is a dead give-away.

Thus an app like Lookout, where you can check in occassionaly, like say a couple times a day, but don't do it all the time, is a better solution.

 

I've noticed no difference in battery drain with or without Life360. It's a great app when it comes to the battery.. devs did an outstanding job there.