Big Mother is Watching You

In the wake of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, interest in hi-tech monitoring equipment for children is booming. Some of it is down right spooky: There are cell phone spies that allow parents to read their children's texts; Jame Bond style trackers for cars that email you if your teen' starts speeding; alcohol and drugs testers that can be secretly fitted on the loo at home...

My colleague Richard Woods put an excellent piece together for last Sunday's paper on the subject, running through some of the products available and concluding that a lot of them are likely to do more harm than good. After all, kids won't learn to mitigate risks unless they take some in the first place. There is also the broader issue of trust to consider.

But one product that might be worth a look at is the Loc8tor (above), a British made device that can pick up a signal from a tag about the size of your thumbnail from as far as 600 feet away and then guide you straight to it. It can track up to 24 tags at once (great for large families!) and if you don't have quite that many kids you might want to attach the spare tags to your handbag, key ring or pets.

The device (which costs £99 for a top of the range set) can also be set so it sounds an alarm if one of your tags wanders outside a pre-defined distance. We've not tested one yet but plan to in the next few weeks. Let us know your thoughts on the practicalities and ethics of the subject...