DESOTO COUNTY, MS (abc24.com) - Cell phone technology is a tool cops are utilizing every day, using smart phones for their two-way intelligence.
It works on almost any smart phone with just about every app that asks to use your location. For cops, they can now use technology as a witness.
If you own a smart phone with apps that track your location, "technically speaking anybody that has it on can track where you are and where your app is," says James Ruffer, a certified ethical hacker.
They can use GPS to follow the phone wherever it goes. It's promoted as a good thing; if you lose or someone steals your phone, you can find it right away.
"When the people buy the app and have that capability on their phone prior to a theft it is always helpful to us," says Lt. Mark Little with the Southaven Police Department.
Southaven cops have used cell phone tracking to solve several cases.
"A week or two weeks ago we had one located in Memphis in an apartment complex," Little says.
DeSoto Supervisor Mark Gardner's iPhone was stolen recently. Deputies found it thanks to tracking technology.
"They had it set up to keep pinging the phone," Gardner says. "As soon as she turned it on, they tracked it to her place of employment."
And investigators went straight to their suspect.
"When they arrested her she had my phone in her purse and they took her to jail," Gardner says.
But cops aren't the only ones who can access your information. As with anything there's room for abuse, so choose wisely.
"It knows where you're at and somewhere they're probably keeping that data," Little says.
"Someone that developed the app can do the same exact thing," Ruffer says. "They're supposed to be doing it for market research, but essentially if someone wanted to stalk me they could as long as I had the app on my phone and I had it enabled."
Ruffer says he can see cops using phones to one day develop suspects as well as track them, tracing which phones were in an area when a crime is committed.
