Wondering how to track down your errant kids or spouse? Well wonder no more. If they have a cell phone with them, cell phone location tracking may just do the trick. There are several options for pinpointing the location of a particular cell phone, all of which can be useful when you really need to find someone (assuming, of course, that they are actually with their phone!)

Cell phone location tracking generally relies upon the location devices within the cell phone itself. Federal Communications Commission regulations require that cell phone manufacturers include technology in their phone that will allow Emergency 911 responders the ability to track down the phone if someone makes a call to 911. This capability is obviously important for anyone calling 911 in distress – if you’re in the middle of being carjacked or are in an area you don’t know, it’s hard for you, the caller, to tell 911 where you are!

Using this cell phone location tracking technology, companies like I.C.U. Inc (at www.tracerservices.com), will help you track someone down anytime they make a call from the phone. In most cases, they can use the cell phone’s built in GPS technology, but even in older cell phones without GPS they can usually pinpoint someone’s location to within 20 to 100 meters using a complex layering and triangulation process.

But with a little advance planning you can make cell phone location tracking work much more easily for you on a day-to-day basis with services that help you find someone who isn’t even making calls with their phone.

For example, companies like Accutracking offer a cell phone location tracking service that allows you to turn your GPS equipped phone into a tracking device. All you have to do is install the software, register with the service and start tracking away – oh, and pay a monthly fee, of course, usually around $6 to $10 per month. With this type of service, you can pinpoint the location of a particular phone as long as it is turned on.

Another option for cell phone location tracking is a GPS enabled phone, like Wherify, which is available for anywhere from $80 to $100. The manufacturers of the phone also provide a service that allows you to track users. It’s ideal for anyone trying to manage a business or keep tabs on aging family members.

In fact, cell phone location tracking has become so easy that privacy experts are becoming concerned about the impact on consumers – especially as government and law enforcement agencies turn to this technology to track down criminal activity. Their concern centers around what they see as the overzealous activities of these organizations, and their impact on those of us caught in the middle.

Whether these concerns are warranted is up to you to decide. If this all sounds a little James Bond to you, consider this: more and more people are abandoning their landline phones (which were, by design, easy to track) and replacing them with cell phones. Pretty soon, cell phone location tracking may be the only way you’ll ever be able to find anyone.

At a minimum, it’s a great way to keep track of business vehicles or your family members – just remind them to keep their phones with them!