Likewise, don’t bother sharing your location on a nature hike.Most mapping apps are not yet designed for indoor spaces and are thus inaccurate for location sharing. Don’t share your location when meeting in an indoor space like a specific store in a mall.Here were some situations where broadcasting your location may be undesirable. If you are paranoid about third parties constantly tracking your child’s location, rest assured that Apple’s privacy policy says location data is stored on servers in an encrypted format for only two hours before it is deleted. Parents who have caved in to buying a smartphone for their child at a young age might consider using Find My Friends to track their child’s location for safety purposes.
For example, I am less inclined to text my partner when I see she is at the office or driving on a freeway, but I am more inclined to text when I see she is at the grocery store to ask her to pick something up. Location sharing can be useful for being considerate of your partner’s time and space.
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When you make plans to meet friends somewhere like a movie theater, get in the habit of sharing your location through Apple’s iMessage, Google Maps or Facebook Messenger to broadcast your location for a short duration, like an hour.But used thoughtfully, it can be a powerful and efficient communication tool.Īfter testing location-sharing tools for two weeks, here are my suggestions for the best times to use them. In other words, used carelessly, location tracking may hurt your privacy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit, said location-tracking technologies enabled law enforcement agencies to monitor people’s movements or advertisers to connect people’s online activities with their real identities. Location-tracking features have stirred controversy for the last decade.
And Snapchat last month released an interactive map letting people share their location with friends indefinitely. Google recently added real-time location tracking in Google Maps. A Comparison of Toolsįirst, a primer on how different location-sharing products work.Īpple and Facebook offer location-sharing tools to drop a pin on a map to share your current location, or to let others follow your location in real time as you move around. Here are some tips for the best- and worst-use cases for sharing your location using a range of old and brand-new location-sharing tools. “For the vast majority of people and the vast majority of circumstances, the benefits they get from sharing their whereabouts way exceed the risks that might be out there,” said Jeremiah Grossman, the head of security strategy for SentinelOne, a computer security company. So we might as well embrace location sharing and reap the benefits. There is a multitude of ways for third parties to find out where we are, including cell towers, the metadata transmitted from telecommunications, and data logged on our phones. Yet security experts agree that on smartphones, it is now practically impossible to stop location tracking.