原创 Seems like the joke is on me!

Quite a long time ago, I wrote an article about a Free Cell Phone Locator Website. In that blog I provided a link to www.sat-gps-locate.com.

When you visit this site, you are presented with a locator form as shown below. So you enter a cell phone number and are presented with a very realistic-looking animated dialogue that purports to show a tracking operation taking place.

This dialogue says that it's using a satellite to locate the cell phone in question – then it presents you with a satellite image – then it appears to be honing in on the location – and then ... but I will leave it to you to see what happens.

The point is that this whole thing is a prank (or a spoof, if you will). If you want to see what happens, but you feel uncomfortable about entering your own cell phone number, you can simply type in something like 255-555-5555.

So what's the problem? Well, my original blog didn't explain that this was a spoof, and even though I wrote that blog years ago, for some reason I've suddenly started receiving a deluge of emails saying "Can you help me locate a cell phone?"

The locator form from the Satellite-GPS-Location website

A typical message might read as follows (in fact, this is a real message, I've just omitted names and email addresses to protect the innocent :-)

I need to perform a cell phone reverse lookup from Claro in Puerto Rico. Honestly speaking I do not have much money, I have tried but some companies never found right details, and some appears to be a scam. I need honest and confident company, at low rates, and not debit my card until provide me right details. I know the phone owner, I just need to corroborate. It is for humanity purpose. Please help me as possible.

Some of the other messages I've received you would not believe. For example, I might receive an email along the lines of "All I know is the telephone number – I don't know the owner's name or address but I REALLY want to locate this phone," to which I might reply that it sounds like they really need to contact a private detective.

The thing is that I always try to respond when anyone emails me about anything (with the exception of things like offers to enlarge portions of my anatomy that certainly do not require enlarging, thank you very much!), but these cell phone locator messages are really coming in thick and fast.

I have no idea why my original blog from yesteryear has suddenly leapt back into life, but the end result is that, after all of this time, it looks like the joke is on me :-)