‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing
‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing
‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’ - then fuck your girlfriend. How can you be in a relationship without trust?
I feel like this shit would end badly for everyone.
Remember how people used to lie and say they were sleeping over at their friend's house or going to so and sos so they wouldn't have to say where they were. Now I guess they can hand their phone to their friend at school/bus and tell them to take it home and carry their watch/tablet/laptop that they can get/respond to texts without the tracking location being on with that device.
This article constantly reloads and alternates between showing and hiding some warning about my privacy lol. Unreadable.
My wife and I have it on Google Maps. I can't remember why, but we've had it for years. I think my wife worries if I'm safe sometimes. I think I check it less than once a year. I checked it once to see if they were on their way home once, that's about it.
My best friend drove me to work the other day. We missed a turn and had to take a detour. Not two blocks after that missed turn, his girlfriend calls him asking where he's going lmao
I would be willing to share locations because I worry about people and don't want them to worry about me, but I'll toss this phone in a Blendtec blender before I install an application that gives some creep in fuckin Dayton Ohio my and my girlfriend's GPS coordinates 24/7. Tasker does the job well enough anyhow
I'll toss this phone in a Blendtec blender
Oof, iSmoke. Don't breathe this!
My wife and I have location sharing enabled in case something happens to one of us. We usually don't use it, but its good to have when we need to meet up at an unfamiliar place after something goes sideways for one of us.
But if your SO doesn't trust you enough to allow you private moments and would accuse you of cheating, your relationship isn't based on trust and thus is very weak.
Immature crap like this makes me very grateful to be a grownup married to a grownup.
Same. I have no idea if the husband even uses location services
Quit cheating or split up. It’s not complicated.
Also like, have we all forgotten about the possibility of someone having two phones.
Meanwhile, I often work with immediate risk of death or injury and, by law, I can not be equipped with a panic button for rescue purposes, as it is deemed unlawful surveillance of the worker.
I am supposed to warn in advance what work I will be doing and agree on a reasonable time window for it to be done safely, before having to call in again to say I am not yet dead and if the task is done or not.
I've never really bothered with relationships, and everytime I see some shit like this, it validates that choice.
Do we all really think this is a great idea when fascism and toxic masculinity are catastrophically growing globally like a late stage mestastized cancer?
Do you think enabling all those men to abusively control their spouses is just the forward march of technological progress?
I assumed the quote in the article was a man talking about his woman would think he's cheating.
same
a common way to keep tabs on friends, family and romantic partners so I allow the app to alert him each time I reach my front door. In a disappointingly heteronormative and retrograde move, I’m more interested in knowing when he goes out – where’s he off to now? – and set up my own notifications accordingly. Having grown up with the internet, gen Z are, generally, more comfortable sharing their data online; Snapchat, the social media platform notoriously most popular with younger users, has long incorporated location sharing with its Snap Maps feature.
Does anyone even have a private moment at all? Also if I were to cheat I'd leave my phone in a very specific spot if I can. Faux location services may work, but mostly switching to a feature phone seems to be secret trick that shuts down these app fueled nightmare.
Oh, sorry, the battery is down I had to switch to my old phone for a moment! When did we stop having private moments and thoughts? I like tech when it aides me, but recently it has been feeding off my personal time and even some order of thoughts in ways it didn't do before. It almost feels like it tries to fix and set up human emotions in ways that are forced.
Do you want technology to replace normal communication and socialisation skills? Or does it even matter to you that it is what happens now. Remember that only a few years before nobody followed you all the day, and even the internet access was relegated to a computer room. How far have we come from that?
Snapchat, the social media platform notoriously most popular with younger users, has long incorporated location sharing with its Snap Maps feature
Fuck me. I dont even share my first and last name with any social media site, much less my photo. My current location? The fuck is wrong with people?
Having public social media can be useful. And it was always possible even before (oh yes MySpace). My issue is having this eternal access as a proof of existance on you all the time. I am fine with the idea of having a public life, what triggers me is the normalisation of surveillance from subjects who never had the concept of being surveillance actors in the first place.
Not to mention, how many abusive partners are already using this feature already? I guess many more than just jealus couples. Airtags had the same problems, but thera are apps to let you spot them, even than they're an invasive technology. Position sharing can be invasive too. Even voluntary sharing is probably worse than we think.
There are few cases where i can think this as a useful feature, like incidents or other unspecified situations.
The one thing that stands out is that this is active constantly. It's not situational. The article doesn't do a good job at detailing the possible abuses of the function but they're there, they were the same with gps trackers and airtags. Gps devices are notoriously expensive relative to these alternatives so nowadays only a certain person would use them.
if you believe the only reason your partner isn't cheating is that you'd find out via location share; what the fuck is the point?
There's always gps spoofing via debug mode too
If I was actively sharing locations with someone and theirs just abruptly vanished, I'd be concerned that something happened to them... either share or don't share.
I have location sharing between me and my friends because... What if something happens to any of us? That's it, nothing else, I don't spy on them.
If you have to use these things in a relationship, then you already have a problem.
This is the correct take.
Then brake up with her! Why you stay with partner that do not trust you? Yea not everything works perfect inba relationship, but people should allow some space.
Why you stay with partner that do not trust you?
Because the dating scene sucks.
That's sort of the irony of it all. People are terrified of being cheated on, because it implies their partner has an attractive alternative they found with mysterious ease. Meanwhile, they're stuck trawling for singles in the gutter.
But it's illusionary. Hot MILFs are not, in fact, In Your Area Waiting To Fuck. Being single, particularly when you're older, is miserable for a lot of people.
Sounds like trust issues
My partner and I used to use location sharing pretty much 100% of the time. We just felt better knowing we could find each other.
But today, we do not, because the trust is shattered.
Google just cannot be trusted with our locations.
We use a self hosted reitti instance instead now
they still have it... if your using an android phone at least... and your cell provider...
Same for any other phone manufacturer. I won't trust Apple any more than I do with Google.
The only ones I'd actually trust to keep it somewhat private and probably LineageOS and GrapheneOS (no experience with gOS)
When we need to know each others location, we share it via element / matrix. Our own server, so no third party.
Happens maybe four times a year.
(Also, do you just always have location services enabled?? IMO it's a battery drain, I pretty much only enable it for this and while I need to navigate)
Nobody to answer to (and share my location).
Despite being somewhat aware of the privacy concerns of having location services always enabled, the potential of having access to finding my phone based on the service to find it (Apples and Googles feature) is more important (to me).
Same reason I have cellular always enabled.
Main reason I keep location services enabled is for geo-tagged photos.
At first I always kept it disabled because of privacy trust issues (e.g. sharing a picture might not always strip the geotags) but since going on a vacation in sri lanka and being able to trace back a picture to a location it became a very useful feature.
Example from my vacation in Sri Lanka:
Yeah I'd turn off location tracking where it not for photo geostamps. It's so useful and fun to track down photos.
I can’t believe the number of people in here with paranoia and shitty relationships that can’t communicate with their “partner”
My wife only asked me to 'follow' her with location sharing because there was a creepy dude in the area who was approaching women. Otherwise we trust each other enough and actually communicate about the things we do. Plus we don't cheat on each other - there's enough stress in life without adding to it lol.
RIGHT??? Jesus Christ people.. Get some therapy
today the guardian almost wrote something about a real concern that totally happened with sane people
Me and my partner share locations. Never once have we done this. It's purely a logistical thing. 10x faster to check someone's location when you're supposed to meet them instead of testing them "wya".
It's also really great when someone is driving to pick you up. You can see how far out they are, and be ready when they arrive.
Yeah, exactly. So great to be able to say, oh, she's about 15 minutes away, so I'll start making dinner. Much easier and safer than texting while driving, too.
We originally set it up so she could make sure I wasn't laying in a ditch somewhere from a cycling crash.
Same. For this to be a problem, you must first have other problems.
How old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don't see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they're being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.
I've never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I've never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don't share location. I don't even keep my location activated for my own use unless I'm actively navigating somewhere new.
We've got plenty of "normal" problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
Same. I don’t even recall setting it up until I stumbled on it one day and could track my wife. I pulled a few pranks until I revealed my hand but we’ve never turned it off. There’s nothing malicious about it and we’re both happy to keep it on.
I don't want to share my location nor have anyone else's shared with me.
Friends and partners can text "I'll be there in 5"
My friend shares her location with her mother. Her mother then nags her with like "Are you seeing someone new? You're spending a lot of time in north brooklyn now." Like, who needs that, or even the temptation of that?
A tech solution is not going to fix a social/mental problem like fear of cheating.
Hell, my wife generally knows where I'm going when I go out but only because I want to tell her and usually invite her. I'd hate for her to be able to ask why I'm at a restaurant instead of the bar I said I was going to, even if I'll tell her about it when I get home
My partner and I share locations. We check sometimes how far away from home they are when walking the dog, or coming from work. Also handy when one of us "loses" their phone and the other can see it's at home/in the car/at work. But we have trust, and don't need to check where the other is spending time.
If my partner could check my location at any time, how would I keep bday and anniversary gifts secret? The places where I go to buy things for her are not places I would normally go. She only has to randomly check one time when I'm at an unusual location for her to ask why and then I have to lie. Not worth it.
We use temporary sharing (can limit to one hour) when meeting somewhere. Beyond that, it's a potential liability.
Example: she once got upset that I wanted to go to the mail room (apt building) alone and didn't want her to go with me. She wanted to know what I was hiding. Turned out to be her bday gift and it was just in the commercial packaging with a shipping label. I let her go get it and she's never been suspicious of my motives since (this was at the very start of our relationship and we hadn't established the level of trust that we have now).
Anyway, again, the one-hour sharing is all we need.
Sounds like you guys have some serious trust issues. If sharing your location with each other devolves that quickly, it ain’t the tech making problems.
I already stated that it only happened once at the start of the relationship. I trust my partner completely and she has never second-guessed me since.
That's creepy af
Vile.
I trust my wife, and she trusts me. We trust each other not to ask for stupid brain-poisoning shit that humans weren't meant to have access to that could one day blow up horribly.
I don't have her passwords, she doesn't have mine. Our phones are locked. I could technically see what she's doing online I suppose via traffic snooping in the router logs but the day I feel the urge to do something like that is the day I kill myself for having abandoned basic moral principles.
We're apes, we have brains built for avoiding snakes in tall grass and finding water and berries. You poison yourself with surveillance, you feed your worst and most destructive impulses. Practice keeping secrets, practice being okay with not knowing. Trust isn't surveillance, trust is knowing that if something fucking mattered you'd be told.
edit: I want my wife to be able to break my heart because if she does she'll have a good reason for doing so. That is what trust is.
I don’t have her passwords, she doesn’t have mine.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death. It's good to have some way for someone you trust to get your online accounts when you pass away so that everything can be concluded and canceled and sentimental content preservation and all that.
For my relationship the means to gain access to my password manager are available in the case of an emergency. Maybe shove the credentials in a bank security box and put access to it into your will if you don't feel you can trust your partner with the knowledge while you are alive.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death.
I wa actually thinking about this. After I had a password breach, I wanted to setup a password manager. I wanted something. That I could host locally and access across my VPN. I also thought it would be neat to have a Deadman switch built in to it, where it pings you at set intervals and asks you to just hit a button to confirm you are alive. If you miss a certain number of pings consecutively, then it emails your specified backup contacts and has allows them to access your passwords.
Is this anything anyone here is interested in? Or does it exist already?
Obviously we have wills lmao
Uhhh, I trust her which is precisely why she has my passwords. Are you guys teenagers or something?
Also, location sharing is literally a form of communication. What if there’s an emergency?
Yes we're teenagers. We've been married 15 years, ceremony was when we were three.
Privacy is important, have you never kept a diary? Do you film therapy sessions lest your partner not know what you discussed? Shit with the door open? You don't need justification for wanting privacy, you need privacy so when you have a good reason for it nothing looks different.
What if there’s an emergency?
What if there is? Get help, that's an insane fear to live with. If I am unconscious there's nothing to do anyway, the hospital or whatever will find her details in my purse and call. What the fuck am I going to do, sit there watching the dot on the map and calling 000 if it stops moving? You are a lunatic, we have society to take care of us while we're out and about and emergency beacons if you're like camping beyond the black stump or sailing the Pacific.
Why would you want to give third parties access to your locations?
Routinely seen this cause drama between people with poor communication.
Nosy friend with it? Get ready for I'm coming by or what are you doing there texts.
know some people who use it to pick up drunk friends just in case. For emergencies. Do they use it like her? Noooooooopeeeee
Most people lack the maturity for this. It skeeves me the fuck out.
Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I'm turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.
A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it's a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it's still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person's feelings by turning it off 🙄
I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂️
Why would you want to share your location so third parties can have access to it?
Oh 1000%
Id tell someone to fuck off so quick.
Some people are enablers for those kinds of friends. Others have no problem with it. Ex and family all shared. They'd all be in each other's shit and were a ok with it. Was so odd to see being the polar opposite.
You'll never be able to stop someone that wants to cheat. Best you can do is be funner and sexier than anyone else your partner might be around. Never understood why that's so hard for some people.
That's the gist of the success of my marriage. Even before we met, we both had reached a point of maturity where we were confident in ourselves as single people, and then from that solid base you can build the relationship in a healthy way. We both try to be the best to our partner, while being ultimately independent. These over-jealous people are using their relationship as a crutch for life so they're terrified of it going wrong. Either that or they're guilty themselves and projecting.
After 30 years of marriage, my wife floated the idea of turning this on. I looked at her like she had two heads.
Why would anyone be willfully surveilled? You know its not just your partner that has access to that data when you have location services enabled.
lol do you think your phone isn’t normally recording your your location data even without this feature turned on?
lol Do you think its not made worse by turning it on?
Starting this by saying: Using tracking apps to see what someone's doing 24/7 or worrying about them cheating is insane and is a solid NO, full stop.
But I do understand why people use tracking apps, and I wish we had good FOSS alternatives. A tracking/location sharing app where the trackee can turn it on/off anytime they want (after using a password/biometrics, to prevent others from messing with it), so loved ones can be sure you made it to your destination.
I don't want people stalking their kids, judging their friends for the places they go, surveiling if someone's a cheater, or worst of all, having their data be sold by the shitty companies that run these services.
I've read stories that have scared me and made me wish I could do something like that when I'm out late. I had to (unfortunately) use Live360 during a field trip in another country cause the teachers needed to keep track of us. I understand safety-wise that these apps are vital
I wish there was one that didn't require nearly every phone permission all the time.
I've setup Hauk for my dad to broadcast his location while delivering. It is only activated when he activates it, but it also works if you want to share location with a specific group of people. It has an app and a website, and can be password protected. It also records history and speed, but history can be turned off.
It is not very robust or particularly well coded, but it is a nice little FOSS app that works, but has to be self hosted.
Jesus fuck, what did people do with their spouses and kids before phones? Trust them?
Sounds unlikely.
private investigators
If this was demanded of me, I would end the relationship immediately. That's absolutely not worth it.
And what if you broke your leg and were lying in a ditch while chipmunks were eating your spleen, eh? How would anyone ever find you huh? Bet the egg is really on your face now!
Well then that's just too bad for me, isn't it?
Obviously I have my phone on me so I could just dial 911. If your phone breaks when whatever occurs to you, then your spouse or whatever isn't going to be able to track your location and you're not going to be able to call 911 either. So either way you're fucked.
i'd get those chipmunks some cheese.
Yep. This is one of those hard lines for me. And I feel like it's a red flag for anyone who demands it from a partner.
I trust my partner and they trust me. I actively encourage them to do things without me, because I want them to be an independent person. I want them to have friends that I don't hang out with.
I comment in a different part of this thread how my spouse and just share everything, but I complete get what you are saying.
To share my location with my partner I need to share it with a third part also and I'm pretty selective about that so I never even signed up for this kind of thing.
I use location services but just leave them off until I need them. I'm not super hard to find anyways
Safety concerns aside, you should trust your partner enough to not need to track them
Exactly. My girlfriend will disappear for an entire day and not come home until 10pm. I usually have no idea where she is or what she's doing (mainly because I forget due to having ADHD), but I don't worry about it because I know she'll never cheat. How can a person even be with someone who they don't trust? Without trust, there is no relationship IMO.
that doesn’t always work out the way you’re expecting though, but I agree, trust should be opt-out.
There is the case of the worriers. People who, when not given positive confirmation otherwise, assume the worst. I'm not talking cheating, but like accidents. "He's 5 minutes late, maybe he got in a car accident and died!" It's not healthy, but it is common and isn't a trust issue.That said, my partner doesn't get to track me, and I have no interest in tracking them.
For me, knowing my spouse’s location is just convenient for knowing ETA without bothering her. It’s not really about trust at all
Same. We both follow each other and neither of us care. We mostly have it enabled for the “just in case” scenario that anything happens to one of us. We can make sure that we know of our last known location.
I’ve also had her use it one time I was away from home in NYC. And I was too drunk to figure out which subway to take to get back to my hotel. So she walked me through step by step while on the phone with me. It fucking rocked.
I figure if my phone manufacturer and cell providers are tracking me all day, why not also my closest friends and family.
Exactly my thought. It’s nothing to do with jealousy and just kind of convenient if you need to meet up or are seeing if they’re on their way home and can get dinner started or whatever.
There should also be enough trust for either side to never use it except for emergencies.
Relationships based on trust?!
Surely you jest!
This is a huge no from me. My SO doesn't need my location, and sharing it has a lot of potential downsides, like:
There's a lot of potential downside and the upside is... my SO knows when I'm almost home?
Yeah, no. Maybe I'll share if I'm doing something risky like hiking alone, but that's never staying on constantly.
Call me old school but I just text my SO when I am almost home.
My route has pretty much no stoplights, so there's not really an opportunity to text. But I send a text when I leave and if I'm delayed (i.e. I'll have an opportunity to text).
It works well.
I don't agree with the practice but I do see the point - it reduces anxiety and gives your partner a sense that you're okay for relationships where trust is strong. For toxic relationships this should absolutely not be a thing.
As far as governments or companies selling the data... You can use some self-hosted services on a de-googled GrapheneOS or LineageOS install and use sattelite location only. Then, pipe that to said self hosted solution that doesn't sell your data like homeassistant or whatever.
Idk, I think it would increase anxiety for my SO, and we have a lot of trust. For example, if I take a coworker home, go out to lunch, etc w/o telling my SO, and they see that deviation in my routine, they could start doubting that trust. But if they just don't see it, they just rely on what we tell each other, and if it's not important, it doesn't need to be communicated and can't create that anxiety.
At least that's my take. My SO is really trusting, but also quite anxious because of nonsense they read on SM and whatnot, so a deviation can create a lot of unnecessary concern.
But yeah, I wouldn't be completely opposed to a self-hosted solution here. I use GrapheneOS, and if the UX isn't too terrible (i.e. easy to toggle off and on), it could be really useful for something like going hiking alone or whatever.
People don't have the emotional maturity to deal with this tool.
If you can't trust your spouse without location, tracking, find another spouse.
No they need therapy not another spouse. They shouldn't have a spouse at all until they've fixed their own insecurities.
Isn’t it strange that “trusting” someone now, means letting them constantly spy on you?
I talked to some late teens about it some months ago. They see it as an “I give you permission to see my every move” kind of thing, as in they have nothing to hide. And they do it pretty early on in relationships, as a show of commitment.
I got my SO to turn off location tracking on Snapchat because I got a message from a family member about his location. She had screenshotted his location from the snap map, searched the address, found the person living there, searched him up, found out he’s also gay, and wondered if I knew he was out with another man?! FYI we attended a dinner party at the guys home.
That’s the level of insane some people get. Constant surveillance, mixed with insecurities and stories of cheating, and you’ve got a shitty ass cocktail.
Me having location shared with my partner of 20 years is one thing. But sharing it with anyone else? Fuck no.
I wouldn't even share my location with my SO of 10+ years. Why? They don't need it, and there's tons of potential negative things with that (phone manufacturer sells it, gov't takes it w/ backdoor deals, breach reveals it, etc).
I don't want my SO's location information, and they shouldn't want mine. If I'm doing some high risk activity, like doing a long hike alone, sure, but it's going off immediately after.
Man I took my kids off location sharing when they got their first phones at 12. Shit is creepy.
Just communicate!
Exactly! My kids aren't getting phones until I trust them, and if I trust them, I don't need location sharing.
If your partner cant trust you not to cheat then work on your relasionship or end it. Dont do this shit.
My wife always has my location. I regularly go out for hours on my motorcycle and I'll tell her I'm going for a hour ride and get lost in the woods for 3. Years ago I had to call her to pick me up after a truck decided to go left in front of me and shattered my arm into 4 pieces. Caller her from the hospital bed high as fuck on morphine. She has my location so if I stop responding for hours she can make sure I didn't wind up in a medical center LOL.
That is entirely different than suspecting you of cheating every moment she doesn't have eyes on you.
Sure, then maybe enable it before those rides and disable afterward, and send her a text when you'd like her to keep an eye on it.
Keeping it on all the time has tons of potential privacy-related problems since phones a aren't perfect.
This. If your partner is jealous, you're not the problem. If they can't work through it with you, walk.
People with trust issues are exhausting. Make sure they're worth it without losing yourself.
Signed, Experienced
My SO gets super jealous/anxious, probably because of all the horror stories in the news. Having access to my location would only make that worse, because then every time I drop a coworker off at home or something and forget to tell my SO, they'll get super suspicious.
I'd much rather work off trust than need to explain every little deviation from my normal schedule just to avoid some anxiety.
My girlfriend and I share our locations mainly for convenience and safety. It’s nice to know that she’s 3 tram stops away from home so I can start cooking dinner for example. She’s also terrible at responding to texts and calls though lol
Same with my wife. I even have it set up for my mother, so I know she’s safe. I don’t understand what the big deal is, as you say it’s a safety and convenience feature, it doesn’t mean you spend the day looking at the app to see where the other person is.
It’s not something I would do in a casual or new relationship, but if I’m with somebody for years, I value their safety over my (perceived) privacy.
And for the people who think this would prevent or bust cheating: lol. They can just turn it off and complain of bad reception, or leave their phone in their car, while they “shop at the mall”. Or just get a second phone. This app is not a substitute for trust
Regarding tech privacy: it’s not like other apps on your phone are not already tracking, I doubt anybody has their GPS constantly turned off. They already know your location, this one feature doesn’t make a difference.
For one, it wrecks your battery life.
Secondly, everyone I know my age keeps GPS off unless using a mapping program.
Finally regarding app privacy, people do care about that which is why grapheneos and other privacy focused OS's exist.
The fact that you don't care about privacy and want the government and corporations to have every sext you've ever received or sent doesn't mean that others don't care as well.
Yeah I know many who just use it as a practical tool in the day to day.
Even know friend groups who use it between themselves (they all live close together)
SnapMap is also very popular, obv less accurate but nice to see who is in town
She could text you, no? It seems like getting her to be better at that is better than opening the can of worms involved with location sharing. For example, here's some bad stuff that could happen:
Etc. Those probably aren't super likely, but being able to avoid it all entirely with a little better communication sounds a lot better.
Sometimes it's worth it, like you're going hiking alone or going to a bad part of town.
Install a ROM on your phone and claim it no longer works on there :-)
I have my location shared with my wife because while I was working out of the house I got tired of answering the same text message ("how far from home are you so I can start dinner?") every afternoon. She's the only one in the world I have no secrets from, so I just never turned it off. I honestly don't know if she still knows I've got it shared with her.
She does.
That's really not the type of person she is, or the type of relationship we have. She might well know that I'm still sharing with her, but it's not because she's controlling or untrusting. It would be because she had a reason to check recently.
If you just see this and, like 20 others, blindly say "you should trust your partner" then you haven't thought about it at all. If you trust your partner completely, then you trust them to use your location information responsibly, right? So trust does not have any bearing on whether to use it or not.
The issue for me is that we should try to avoid normalising behaviour which enables coercive control in relationships, even if it is practical. That means that even if you trust your partner not to spy on your every move and use the information against you, you shouldn't enable it because it makes it harder for everyone who can't trust their partner to that extent to justify not using it.
On a more practical level, controlling behaviour doesn't always manifest straight away. What's safe now may not be safe in two years, and if it does start ramping up later, it may be much, much harder to back out of agreements made today which end up impacting your safety.
Privacy is something that I think needs to be actively encouraged. It is a right, and thinks like location tracking are creeping their way into daily life and eroding that right.
No one should have the ability to violate that. And we shouldn't be making it easier to.
oh good lord no. years, decades, centuries even couples have trusted each other WITHOUT the need to tracking their where abouts. suddenly this is something we need? no it isn't. but sure, you go ahead and slap a tag on your "loved one" so you know where they are at all times and so will whatever company is selling your data from said tag.
I didn't say it's something you need. Read the rest of my comment.
My mom the other day sent me like 5 texts in a row because I didn't see them while working. Had to stop and tell her "For the past century, if most people wanted to contact their kids they waited months for letters to go back and forth. No need to panic over not talking for a day."
I trust my family. Trust them enough that they have the passcode to my phone and can easily open it at any time.
But I'm not sharing location. How will I sneak out to buy gifts if they get a notification when I leave work? Nope.
I appreciate the sentiment here, but I disagree with the premise in the first paragraph. It sounds like the age-old "nothing to hide" argument.
I trust my SO with my location information and I have nothing to hide, but I don't provide it because they don't need it. That's it. Why should I compromise my privacy and potentially security just because I trust someone? That's dumb. They don't need it so I don't provide it, that's my primary reason and that should be enough.
I have other reasons too, such as:
And so on. There's no upside and tons of potential downsides, so why do it?
They don’t need it so I don’t provide it, that’s my primary reason and that should be enough.
It is enough. In fact, it's better than the "you should trust your SO" argument which doesn't make any sense.
There's no upside
It is insanely useful to know where your partner is. It is not necessary. It is still useful. I would not allow my partner 24/7 location information. It is still useful. I don't trust any app/manufacturer that allows such a feature. It is still useful.
It sounds like the age-old “nothing to hide” argument.
It's really not, though. For many couples (including my own relationship), this is something we talked about before implementing. We both decided that since we have the technology, we should use it to our advantage....so we do. Right now we're using Life360, but I've already implemented Traccar (self-hosted and accessed via Home Assistant) for our older kids who have phones (Pinwheel), and I plan on extending that capability to my wife as well, so we can dump Life360.
My wife and I have each other's locations. We trust each other. We just like having that information available. It's really not that hard to understand.
Not hard to understand, no, but many find it to be creepy and invasive.
Not hard to understand, no, but many find it to be creepy and invasive.
Those people are free to not use the tech. Being forced to use the tech, however, is absolutely a problem.
Yeah like .... I trust my husband, and I am also not his keeper, so I do not need to know where he is 24/7. I find it very odd and invasive.
It sounds like you and your wife have a healthy relationship. That’s awesome! But, for possessive and controlling relationships, surveillance can be harmful.
Personally, my location is shared with my sister. I’d share it with my partner but he is a bit of a Luddite. I wouldn’t be sharing because he asked, I would be doing it so he could find me easily in an emergency.
And, I wouldn’t ask him to share his. If he turned it on and wanted me to have it, that’s cool. And if not, that’s cool too.
But, for possessive and controlling relationships, surveillance can be harmful.
Absolutely. My previous marriage was like that. Luckily the topic of location tracking never came up.
My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
Also, do yourself a favor and use something open source and/or self hosted. Home Assistant, for example, has the ability to track location data for iOS and Android devices and pin that location to a map. Don't give your location data to corporations to be used for data mining.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup: If you're always prepping your heart and mind for a split, you'll always have one foot out the door. Not everyone will agree with me, but that's how I feel and it's why I don't have one. Find yourself someone who is ride or die, if you are looking for a lifetime partner. Don't settle for someone you can't trust with your life.
That said, not everyone is looking for monogamy for the rest of their life, either, and that's OK, too.
My wife and I have had our location shared with each other for years, but it's not a "Are they cheating?" thing. I have been married for 14 years and never wonder if my wife is cheating on me. It's just incredibly useful for seeing how far away one of us is from home to do things like plan dinner prep times, know where to look for a lost phone, etc. If you can't trust your SO, there is something wrong that you need to address and micro-managing where they are is toxic.
My wife and I are the same. Shared location means rather than a message saying "are you on your way home?" you can just check where they're at. If I'm out on a late night callout she can see where I am instead of worrying or constantly pinging for updates. Meeting somewhere? Live updates keeps everyone in sync, and let's you know if you've got time to do something on the way or if they're already waiting or whatever.
People must be in some super unhappy relationships if they see location sharing as nefarious.
Call me old fashioned, but I put it in the same bucket as a prenup
I don't agree. Prenups are passive, they don't do anything until not needed. all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
My wife and I share our location. We both trust each other implicitly and neither of us consider it a breach of privacy, but rather a willing sharing of information. I think if this is demanded of someone unilaterally, it would be both a breach of privacy and trust, but it's just so damn convenient for our lives and makes us both feel safer. If I'm out late in the city to see a friend, my wife can easily see that I'm safe making it to my car and driving home. If my wife is working late and forgets to text, I can easily check and know she's still in the building. As two gay women, it was a no-brainer for us. I would never demand that of someone. It seems like a lot of people in the comments see sharing location as an intrinsically harmful or negative action, whereas it's far more context and consent dependent for me. Hell, I even share my location with a friend for a few hours if I'm doing something sketchy.
Legally and practically, prenups are anything but passive. They’re proactive tools. They’re usually dormant, but they’re ready to be called into action.
Marriage is different things to different people. Some have every intention to make it work, no matter what. To them, a prenup is an anti-“burn the ship”. It’s a statement.
Also, tools like “find my” are not major breaches of privacy if both parties jointly agree to use them. For me and my family, it’s the ultimate expression of trust. I’m never somewhere I shouldn’t be, and I like my family knowing where I am, for a multitude of reasons.
There are two types of people who a tracker wouldn’t be effective for: those who are in an inappropriate location, and those who are constantly questioning why someone is in an innocent place, regardless of where it may be. However, at that point, the issue isn’t the trackers; it’s the people.
all the while this is a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust.
How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is “a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust”.
Maybe if one party is unwilling or has no say/control in location sharing but specifically in the scenario at hand I don’t see it.
This is like, the opposite of old-fashioned. Calling your wife when you're on the way home is old-fashioned.
This article is the first time I'm actually hearing about this idea because it never even occurred to me as something people would actually want to do. I frankly don't see the point of this nonsense. I would much rather talk to my wife on the phone and communicate with her about plans. It's much more human and normal, and facilitates good communication habits. It takes 2 minutes to give my wife a call and, you know what, I get to talk to my wife! We don't need technology invading absolutely every aspect of our lives. We don't need to be constantly plugged in and attached to our phones at the hip.
It also has other downsides, like making it hard to surprise your partner, constant battery drain from the constant location chatter, etc. In fact, it seems like all downside with no actual benefit (setting aside the trust stuff, because it's pretty irrelevant either way).
We don't need technology invading absolutely every aspect of our lives.
Calling each other is technology. It's simply a technology you've normalized
I get where you're coming from, but I loathe talking on the phone. I love talking to my wife, but we do that when sitting down for coffee and breakfast in the morning.
The main reason my wife and I don't have location sharing set up isn't because of trust or lack thereof between each other, but because I don't trust proprietary/commercial location-sharing services.
I've been meaning to set up a self-hosted system (mainly because it seems like Home Assistant could do some neat automations with that info), but haven't gotten around to it yet.
One of my gf's friends went through a pretty nasty breakup, moved and whatnot and most of her friend group were trying to make sure that the ex and his friends didn't have their location anymore and I'm just sitting here like "its wild that you have to go through that" well a couple weeks later 3 of her tires were stabbed with a screw driver or something, and while there's no concrete evidence that they learned where she moved, I'm still over here trying to get them all to be more conscious about online privacy and location sharing, but nothing works....
Yeah we use it with home assistant, and Bluetooth beacons to turn on the garden lights when we get home, and turn on interior lights if neither of us are marked as home. Also turn on the electric blanket if we are out and heading towards home after 9pm. Also the person detection camera only alerts us if we aren't home.
Also turn on the electric blanket if we are out and heading towards home after 9pm
Make sure it defaults to OFF after power loss. My colleague had a close call when the smart plug with the infra panel plugged in decided to turn on after the power outage.
Would you mind sharing your automation yaml for the garden lights? I'd love to do more with Bluetooth beacons but don't know enough about how they work to do anything with them.
When you get back to that project: I used this project here. Mainly for myself tho.
Hauk
Of all the dystopian things, this is probably the most dystopian thing I’ve read lately.
This is horrible.
People my age have their whole friend groups on location sharing apps like that, it's awful.
Some friends of mine have literally hundreds of friends with their Snapchat location sharing on
Wtf? Is this the outcome of growing up with helicopter parents or where are those trust issues coming from?
Witch your age group. Do you mind giving examples where it's been helpful and maybe examples when it's not been so helpful?
Why, though?
Most people my age that I know have location tracking shared with SO’s. It’s considered a step in the relationship.
It's be a step out of the relationship with me.
Grim
Here’s something even worse, IMO, if you’d like to check it out.
This kind of shit is pretty common for younger people. I work as a teacher, and I hear students talk about this all the time. I tell them how unhealthy it is blah, blah, blah. My SO tells the younger people at her work "If I had PumpkinSkink's location sharing on he couldn't surprise me with cake from the bakery". She has had more success than I getting people to stop.
Creepy
If you sacrifice freedom for security, then you deserve neither.
Patriot act, Snowden, Cambridge Analytica
we already done sacrificed freedom. This is the FO stage
Not just couples. I was aghast to learn that my fellow parents at work track the location of their teenage kids. All of them, except me. What the fuck? If I want to know where they are I text and ask.
What's more - half of them also have it turned on in the other direction.
This is crazy to me. I want my kids to grow into adults and I'm not going to surveil them all the time. I think a kid of teen age has some reasonable expectation of privacy. We are close, I have a good relationship with my kids but not THAT close, I don't need to know if you stopped at Wawa on your way home.
"safety is certainly a big part of the appeal for many users – so I allow the app to alert him each time I reach my front door." I'm finding that people are irrationally paranoid these days. They see random acts of violence in the news and think it might happen to them but its so statistically unlikely given these are already unlikely events and these people usually middle class people living in nice areas.
Humans are awful at accessing risk and chance, one of the reasons casinos and lotteries thrive.
Look at fear of flying for an example, all statistics say you are many many many times over more likely to get into a car accident on your way to the airport, than during the flight. Even when the ride to the airport is usually short and the flight very long. Yet people are afraid of flying, but not going by car. By percentage, there are of course those, rightly so, afraid of cars as well.
Risk assessment is probability and severity. The probability can be vanishingly low, but if the severity is astoundingly high then acting like a high risk situation could be appropriate.
Take asteroids. The last planet killer to hit us was 94million years ago. A rudimentary estimate could put the probably as 1:94mil. The severity of an asteroid impact of that magnitude is off the charts, so it is reasonable to consider it a risk and act accordingly to spend resources to search for and track asteroid trajectories.
The severity of abduction, murder, and rape is probably pretty high for most people, so considering it a risk even with a very small probability is not unreasonable.
the flight very long.
IIRC most accidents happen during take-off/landing.
Once you're up there it's chill.
They see random acts of violence in the news
Which is the only thing the news shows them to begin with.. almost as if they cherry-pick stuff.
BREAKING NEWS: Girl gets home safely after night out. More at 11.
Hi bros. I'm just letting you know about this terrible app called GPS spoofer. Make extra sure you've haven't installed it on your phone by mistake because a lot of apps will download this without letting you know.
I second the caution for these apps. I've been living on Utupoa Island for the last four years and didn't even know it.
My wife and I work different schedules. on the rare day off that were both home, she's often out of the house when I wake up. She's not great at replying to texts. I never know when she's going to be home, and usually have no clue what she's out doing or where.
But I know who she's doing while she's gone- no one. Because I trust my wife. I know who she is as a person, I know what our relationship is like.
I have no particular desire to know her location at all times. I'm sure if I asked, she'd share it with me, and I'd do the same for her. I might occasionally do that when I'm off hiking or something in case there's an emergency, but half the time I wouldn't have a signal anyway.
We are two humans with our own lives. Those lives are very intertwined, but we're both allowed to go off and have our own adventures, occasionally some secrets, and we don't need to know where each other is 24/7
We only share our locations when for example my wife is coming home from shopping groceries so that I know when to go out to the parking lot to help carry the groceries home.
I had no idea people share locations constantly.
My friend shares her's with me continuously. I do not share mine. I see no point. I don't even know why she shares her's with me. I've only found it a bit useful two or three times over the years. And more of in a "I don't have to walk around this area to find her" way. If I didn't have her location I'd just walk around a couple minutes to I spotted her.
I don't know, it's a pointless thing that I just forgot to turn off at some point. I couldn't care less if she knows where I am and sometimes I do what her to know, like when I go hiking alone.
Yeah, it is possible to be totally sane about it.
No it really isn't, privacy is a nuanced thing.
Are you happy with the company that makes the app and the 71960 partner companies with "legitimate interest" knowing where you are all the time too?
Might I suggest this: https://www.zood.xyz/
I don't know why I hadn't thought about it. For sure I don't. I hoped that it was secure in some way. Yeah that's kind of really bad lol
Since you're one of the few people that admit to you and your partner using it: What do you think about the company knowing where you are at all times?
Yes, somebody pointed that out already. I need to find out more about how it's done.
I noticed this becoming more common. Young people do so enjoyably. Old people I hear talk about it, it sounds controlling and bordering on unhinged paranoia. Those young people will be old someday too along with whatever sorts of paranoias they develop like all people seem to do
Kids these days® were born into a world of surveillance capitalism, so they have no reference to compare it to.
At least when they get lost because of dementia it'll be easy to find them.
Me an my GF have been sharing location for years now, it has never been an issue and often been handy to see if one of us is driving from work to home or finding each other in a festival or theme park etc.
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
But well I kinda wanna surprise here and for that I need to drive somewhere where I normally don't go, so now I gotta find an excuse just incase she checks my location. Or I just turn of my Phone for an hour or two
Eww this is just weird you have to think about that.
In my 8-or-so years of using it with my partner, close friends, and some family, the only occasion where I turned it off was when visiting a jewelry store for an engagement ring.
I know I have less privacy in principle, but I've never had an issue crop up so far.
I kind of don't want to send my location to "location sharing" companies to sell to data brokers.
Trust is good, control is not better.
I know several people that do this, but most often it's parents with kids. That's still not an excuse though as there deserve their own privacy. In all cases that I've seen though, it's through Apple/iPhones. Now I'm not saying Android users can't or don't do this, but Apple makes it so easy, that it's everywhere and I hate that.
Never. Not even once.
Lol. I keep telling my partner that I’m sharing my location data with her so don’t need to worry where I might be (Im pretty bad at reporting home unfortunately)
I do this location sharing with someone.
The only time it crosses my mind to check it is when they are coming to visit or we are otherwise traveling or meeting up.
I thankful for whatever makes it easy for me to just be chill about it. It’s nice to not have to manually mess with an app when needed. And it’s there in an emergency.
Edit: oh shit. This reminds me that I saw one of those 360 something ads recently. I usually avoid tv ads, but happened to see one. It was unhinged in how it was stoking paranoia to sell the tracking. It was targeted at parents.
Life360?
That sounds right
We have location sharing enabling via Find My since everyone but me uses Apple. I don't think my wife ever uses it and I only use it as a means of checking they seem to still be alive when they are otherwise late to somewhere they planned to be if I get worried about them.
In years past I would just call them, but this way is less actively intrusive. But people that use it as a spying tool have issues.
First step - get a gf
Just treat them like regular people, like you would anyone else, and they'll come to you. Basically, you don't have to hit on them. Just be their friend. Let it happen naturally.
I’m pretty sure she’ll think I’m about to pop out from behind a car to scare her.
I am of multiple minds on it.
I very much do like the idea of sharing your location (once you are in a committed relationship). Knowing when your partner is coming home or stuck at work or at the grocery store is useful. Same with knowing that someone can check in on you if something horrible happens. And I have 100% shared my location temporarily for that.
The problem is that... you don't always want to do that. And explaining that becomes a mess.
At its core it is opt in versus opt out but it also can trigger the kinds of conversations that are really better suited to a lot later in a relationship. Like with prenups. There are a lot of REALLY REALLY REALLY good reasons to have them but it is the kind of topic that you can't even raise without having the implication of "I don't trust you".
Putting aside how much of a red flag that is,
Is there any foss self-hosted version of these location sharing services?