Raw Story picks up on a combo of stalking-by-wireless stories today. The first, from the Guardian, explains how simple it is to monitor someone's location using mobile phone "buddy" services -- yes, you have to be approved as a buddy on their phone before you can do so, but all you need to do to get that kind of access is simply grab their phone for a couple of minutes.

Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre expresses shock at quite how simple the process is. "I knew that the police could do this, and telecommunications companies, but not any old random person with five minutes access to someone else's phone," he writes.

Without his girlfriend knowing, Goldacre was able to track her movements with alarming accuracy. "I set up the web site to track her at regular intervals, take a snapshot of her whereabouts automatically every half hour, and plot her path on the map so that I can view it at my leisure," he writes. "It felt, I have to say, exceedingly wrong."

Similarly, Singapore News looks at a system from AsiaTracks for tracing, locking and immobilizing your car using your mobile phone. Sounds great for finding your car in a large parking lot, or getting it back if it's stolen -- but as developer Patrick Loh points out, it's also useful for instant repossesion. "In the event that the car owners didn't pay two or three installments, the finance company can recover the vehicle via the computer, or they can immobilize the car any time," he says.

Regardless of the 'Big Brother'-ish implications of these solutions, they mostly come across as a solid argument for much stronger authentication: how long will it be before biometrics become standard on all mobile devices?