Spy gadget leaves nowhere to hide

(The Daily Telegraph) For unfaithful spouses and errant employees, things may never be the same again. A Swedish moose hunter has invented a matchbox-sized device that can trace just about anything that moves.

Using mobile phone text messages and satellite navigation technology, the surveillance gadget can reveal its location to an accuracy of 10 ft in 140 countries.

Hidden in a briefcase or under the dashboard of a car, it threatens to blow the cover of anyone who wants to keep their movements secret, giving its owner the kind of snooping powers previously seen only in James Bond films.

Called Followit, the ?700 device was invented by Olaf Lundberg, a Swede who lost his dog while moose hunting.

Mr Lundberg’s brainwave was to find a way of squeezing the workings of a GPS satellite navigation receiver and a mobile phone with a battery and two aerials into a box that he could strap to his dog’s collar.

Richard McPartland, director of Tel Trak Technologies, based in Winchester, Hants, who developed the device with Mr Lundberg, said that after using it to track his dog, Mr Lundberg decided to sell it to other hunters.

“At first he sold it through hunting magazines, but then he found it was being used by truck companies to monitor the movement of their drivers through Sweden,” he said.

In a demonstration seen by The Daily Telegraph, the device tracked the position of a car to the street in Winchester where the car was parked, even giving details of the nearest house number.

Followit is now being sold to parents who want to keep tabs on their children, pet owners, private investigators, car hire firms, yacht owners, haulage companies, and travellers concerned about losing their luggage. It is also being offered to lone workers, such as community nurses, who can use its panic button if they are attacked.