GPS trackers are legal in many everyday situations and criminal in others, and the answer to whether GPS trackers are legal comes down to three questions: who owns the thing being tracked, who is being monitored, and whether that person consented. Tracking your own car is fine. Tracking your teenager is fine. Slipping a device onto another adult’s vehicle, or a tracking app onto their phone, is a crime in at least 26 states and the District of Columbia, and it can trigger federal charges and civil damages on top of that.
Tracking Your Own Vehicle or Property
If you own the vehicle or equipment, you can put a tracker on it. State tracking-device statutes routinely exempt the registered owner, lessor, or lessee of a vehicle from any prohibition on electronic monitoring. The same rule covers businesses tracking their own fleets. Several states carve out explicit exceptions for commercial motor carriers, fleet vehicle owners, and telematics services.1National Conference of State Legislatures. Private Use of Location Tracking Devices: State Statutes
The pivot is ownership. A tracker on your own property is your business. A tracker on someone else’s property is a different legal question entirely.
Tracking Your Minor Child
Parents and legal guardians can monitor their minor children’s location. States including Delaware, Michigan, and Tennessee explicitly allow a parent or guardian to install a tracking device on a vehicle the minor operates, even where the general statute otherwise bans non-consensual tracking.1National Conference of State Legislatures. Private Use of Location Tracking Devices: State Statutes
Whether the tool is a dedicated GPS device in a teenager’s car or a location-sharing app on a child’s phone, the law generally treats parental tracking as a reasonable exercise of parental responsibility. The exception ends when the child turns 18. After that, they’re an adult and the standard consent rules apply.
Employer Tracking on Company Vehicles
Employers can track vehicles they own, but a growing number of states require them to tell employees first. New York, Connecticut, and Delaware, among others, have enacted written-notice requirements for electronic monitoring of employees, including GPS tracking. The practical rule: install the tracker on the company-owned vehicle, disclose it in writing, and ideally have the employee acknowledge the tracking.
Personal vehicles used for work are a different matter. If the employee owns the car, the employer generally cannot install a GPS device without the employee’s explicit written consent. Doing so exposes the employer to the same criminal and civil liability any other person would face for tracking a car they don’t own.
Tracking a Spouse or Partner
This is where people most often get into trouble, and the answer is less intuitive than many expect. If you are the sole registered owner of the vehicle, placing a tracker on it is treated like tracking any other property you own. If the car is titled solely in your spouse’s name, or the situation involves their phone rather than a shared car, the analysis changes.
Nine states specifically prohibit installing a tracking device on a motor vehicle without the vehicle owner’s consent. In those states, putting a tracker on your spouse’s car when it’s titled in their name alone can be a criminal offense.1National Conference of State Legislatures. Private Use of Location Tracking Devices: State Statutes And covertly installing a tracking app on your spouse’s phone is almost certainly illegal regardless of state, because you don’t own the phone and don’t have consent.
One detail catches people off guard. In states like Florida, consent to tracking is automatically presumed revoked when either party files a protective order or injunction against the other. Even if your spouse originally agreed to location sharing, that agreement evaporates the moment a restraining order enters the picture. Continued tracking after that point is a felony.
Tracking Another Adult Without Consent
This is the scenario most likely to end in criminal charges. At least 26 states and D.C. have laws that directly address the non-consensual tracking of another person’s movements.1National Conference of State Legislatures. Private Use of Location Tracking Devices: State Statutes
These laws come in two forms. In about a dozen states, including Connecticut, New York, Maryland, and Washington, non-consensual tracking is folded into the stalking statute, so the charge itself carries the stigma and penalties of a stalking offense.1National Conference of State Legislatures. Private Use of Location Tracking Devices: State Statutes Other states treat it as a standalone offense, typically a misdemeanor for installing a tracker on someone else’s vehicle without the owner’s consent.
Phone Apps Count Too
Modern tracking rarely involves a magnetic box under a bumper. More often, it’s an app quietly installed on someone’s phone or a location-sharing feature enabled without their real knowledge. State laws are catching up. Florida’s tracking statute explicitly covers “tracking applications” installed on another person’s property, not just physical devices. The District of Columbia’s law includes spyware and electronic monitoring systems in its definition of covered devices. Several other states use language broad enough to sweep in phone-based tracking, such as “any electronic device that permits tracking of a person’s movement.”
Installing a tracking app on someone else’s phone without their knowledge carries the same legal risk as bolting a GPS unit to their car. In many jurisdictions, the penalties are identical.
When Police Need a Warrant
Law enforcement operates under constitutional constraints that don’t apply to private citizens. Two Supreme Court decisions set the current rules.
In United States v. Jones (2012), the Court unanimously held that physically attaching a GPS device to a suspect’s vehicle and monitoring its movements is a search under the Fourth Amendment.2Legal Information Institute. United States v. Jones The government had obtained a warrant but installed the tracker outside the authorized time window and in the wrong jurisdiction, making the surveillance warrantless.3Oyez. United States v. Jones
In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Court extended Fourth Amendment protection to cell-site location information, the data wireless carriers collect showing which cell towers a phone connects to. The government had obtained 127 days of Carpenter’s location records using a court order requiring only “reasonable grounds.” The Court, 5–4, held that accessing this kind of long-term location data is a search, and police generally need a warrant supported by probable cause.4Supreme Court of the United States. Carpenter v. United States Narrow exceptions exist for emergencies, such as pursuing a fleeing suspect, protecting someone from imminent harm, or preventing the destruction of evidence.
What Illegal Tracking Costs
The penalties come from two directions, criminal and civil, and they can run at the same time.
Federal Criminal Penalties
Using a GPS tracker or tracking app as part of a pattern of stalking or harassment can trigger federal charges under 18 U.S.C. § 2261A. Sentences escalate with the harm caused:
- No physical injury: up to 5 years in federal prison
- Serious bodily injury: up to 10 years
- Life-threatening injury or permanent disfigurement: up to 20 years
- Death of the victim: up to life imprisonment
Tracking someone in violation of a restraining order, protective order, or no-contact order carries a federal mandatory minimum of one year in prison, with no possibility of a lesser sentence.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 2261 – Interstate Domestic Violence
State Criminal Penalties
State-level charges vary widely. In states where non-consensual tracking falls under the stalking statute, offenses range from misdemeanors to felonies depending on the circumstances. States that treat unauthorized tracking as a standalone offense typically classify a first violation as a misdemeanor, with penalties climbing for repeat offenses or cases involving threats. Fines range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, with jail time up to a year for misdemeanors and longer for felony charges.
Civil Damages
Federal law gives victims a private right of action. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2520, a person whose location data was unlawfully obtained can sue for the greater of their actual damages or statutory damages of $100 per day of the violation or $10,000, whichever is higher. Courts can also award punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and litigation costs.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 2520 – Recovery of Civil Damages Authorized For someone tracked covertly over several months, that math adds up quickly.
State-level civil claims are also available in many jurisdictions, usually framed as invasion of privacy or a related tort. They can produce separate damages awards, and they don’t require a criminal conviction first. Between federal statutory damages, state tort claims, and possible punitive damages, unlawful GPS tracking is among the more financially costly privacy violations a person can commit.