By Deirdre Healey
The Hamilton Spectator

Mischievous teenagers beware.

An Ancaster company is using high technology to put a serious crimp in your social lives. Global Positioning Systems is going to let parents know when their child is late, plays hooky or sneaks out of the house.

The 24-hour-a day service is going to cost just $200 a year.

Vince Poloniato, president of the Ancaster company Track 'Em, has recently turned his attention to capitalizing on parents' need to keep a close watch on their children or anyone else.

He began marketing the service three years ago to employers as a way of keeping track of staff taking long lunches or using company vehicles outside of work. But over the past year, more parents have been ordering the service and his clientele has grown to 3,000, he said.

The tracking device, which can be planted in vehicles or accessed through cellphones with GPS service, allows the user to pinpoint a person's location by logging into the company's website. The location can be displayed on a map or by address. Information is updated every two minutes.

The user can view a timeline of where the person has been all day and even access a history of where the person has been months earlier.

The user can also set 'fences' around certain locations, which enables them to be notified when the person they are monitoring crosses over the line.

This service is especially useful for parents, said Poloniato, who uses his service to track his 17-year-old son, his wife and his employees.

"If my son doesn't cross the fence around our house by 11 p.m., I will know about it," he said.

The service also brings comfort to worried parents.

Fences can be placed around a child's school or a friend's house and the parent is alerted when their child arrives at a destination.

Jeff Paikin's 10-year-old daughter doesn't leave to catch the school bus without the cellphone tucked into her knapsack.

Each morning Paikin receives a notice at work that his daughter has made it to school safely.

"It gives me peace of mind," said the father of three. "I wish I could inject this device into all three of my daughters. It's better to do that than to see their faces on a milk carton."

But Paikin admits his daughter's current excitement about being tracked could change once she is a teenager.

Marvin Ryder, marketing professor with McMaster University, said the service can be valuable, but raises concerns around privacy rights.

"A parent has every right to know where their child is, but that right becomes questionable when it involves teenagers," he said.

Ryder anticipates the service will lead to children taking their parents to court over privacy issues.

The development of GPS, which was initially used by the military, into a tracking service for consumers is "a natural progression," Ryder said, and society will work out boundaries as the service becomes more popular.

Poloniato's product is currently distributed by Telus as part of a cell phone plan, and within weeks, 1,000 dealerships across Canada will start offering the Tracklight -- a device the size of a chocolate bar that can be placed in your vehicle -- as an added feature when buying a car.

For teenagers, the expansion of Poloniato's business comes as bad news.

"That has serious potential to screw me over," said Sam Preston, 15.

Lying to your parents and sneaking around behind their backs is the fun and exciting part of being a teenager, said Debbie Oldes, 14.

"Our parents got to do it so we should be able to do it too."

But like many teenagers, Oldes is already thinking one step ahead of her parents.

"I guess we could just turn our cellphones off."

dhealey@thespec.com

905-526-3468