Now if they got your number...anyone can have your location in realtime.
Your phone number's area code gives other people a clue to where you live, or have lived in the past. Startup company Loc-Aid can use your full phone number to figure out exactly where you are right now.
The service has caught the eye of banks and card issuers interested in checking where their customers are—as a way to reduce fraud—and of retailers interested in sending deals to people nearby.
"We can locate any one of the more than 350 million devices on the major U.S. and Canadian carriers in real time," says Rip Gerber, founder and CEO of Loc-Aid, based in San Francisco.
You can test Loc-Aid's ability to find your phone using this Web demo. It takes from five to 20 seconds to get a location fix for the device associated with a phone number.
