I share my realtime Google Maps location with 30 people, friends, family, people from the internet.
They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time.
Why not?
The very real upside is that they casually see me while looking at Google Maps and strike up a conversation or invite me somewhere, something that's happened many times.
The article talks about private and public life... but people will go to all the effort to post the very same things their location reveals on social media. Might as well make it real time.
If you're sharing location data with people who would use it to harass you, that seems like a selection issue, not a systemic issue.
Location data is hardly private. Everyone should share theirs with as many interesting people as possible. If only I had done so back in school.
If those risks outweigh the benefit of having an impromptu lunch with them, or the sonder comfort of seeing them enjoy a Friday night at home, then don't share your location with that person.
If you feel that way about everyone, then you are a very different person to me (and probably OP).
> If those risks outweigh the benefit of having an impromptu lunch with them, or the sonder comfort of seeing them enjoy a Friday night at home, then don't share your location with that person. If you feel that way about everyone, then you are a very different person to me (and probably OP).
If you feel these are the only two possibilities, we're definitely very different people.
I do the same thing, just smaller group. Answering the questions you’re asking just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
> just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
Great! You tell them honestly, what could possibly go wrong. I'm sure nobody's feelings would be hurt when you tell them you weren't feeling like meeting them.
Now next time you drop by and still don't manage to catch them for whatever reason. Now your prior "candor" becomes a lie -- one that never needed to arise in the first place.
Maybe you enjoy getting yourself into these kinds of situations, but hopefully you can understand why others might not.
> Maybe if you don’t lie to people you wouldn’t have that issue?
The heck? Is it that hard for you to imagine these occurring without lying? You have X planned, and now your plans change to Y. Now you owe everyone whose invitation you'd declined an explanation, or they wonder if you're a liar. Or I guess if they're like you, they already assumed you're a liar.
Because having to keep track of who might have noticed you on the map—then explaining your choices to them—is draining and makes you feel like you can’t make a basic personal choice without justifying it.
Because sometimes people can be unreasonable. (Bad day, drunk, generally difficult personality, etc.) The more people you add to your circle, the more you are likely to run into this.
Because it’s none of their business. You are not owed my time just because I’m nearby. That’s not a healthy boundary to have. Location sharing encourages “boundary creep” that forces you to more frequently justify and reinforce your personal boundaries, adding friction to the relationship.
I'd be fine sharing my location with my immediate family, but they refuse it. When they wonder how close I am to being home, it isn't supposed to be such a serious thing as to have my precise GPS location. It's a reason to think about me or message me.
I've come to think that it's one of the many "problems" that many people don't actually want to solve, and being so heavily connected is taking away some of the "magic" of social behavior and replacing it with efficiency.
As a random example, waiting for a date to show up is probably more exciting than having a precise read of their location. Or, when my parents were visiting, they'd often say they were just thinking about how I'd be getting home soon.
The nice thing is that everyone has the ability to decide if they want to share their location or not. But even on social media, I only reveal my current location when I'm somewhere that I'd be open to running into people. Otherwise I intentionally wait till I'm somewhere else before posting about where I was.
My only location sharing is with my wife. It is very useful to check things like how far away she is before getting home so I can start dinner, or seeing if she has left the house yet or can I still text her to ask for her to do something at home.
My location sharing with my partner is a Signal message. “On my way home!” Works great, hasn’t failed yet. And I can still make it a surprise, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
We often send those, but sometimes we are busy or traffic is worse than normal. I don’t want to text to ask where she is, because she might be driving and I don’t want to distract her.
When you have two young kids, surprises aren’t usually on the table. We need to know when things are happening.
I also like having the feature in case she is in an accident or something.
My location sharing with my partner is a sudden appearance. "Hello, I'm here!" Works great, hasn't failed yet. And I can still just not show up, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
About a year ago, I started sharing location with my girlfriend. In general I hated the idea and I'd sworn I'd never do it in previous relationships. But she lives about 20 minutes away, and she convinced me it would be nice for the reasons you outlined.
I could write a book about this, but to sum it up: It lasted about six months. I felt somewhat too watched and I started changing my behavior. Instead of texts like "what are you up to?" she would send texts like "how many drinks have you had?" Or we'd just stop checking in with each other by text, because we could just see where the other one was. It felt weird to ask "where'd you go after work?" when obviously I already knew the answer. At the same time, I also got a bit too obsessed with checking on her. I started watching for long periods, which got me noticing irregularities. Sometimes at home, her position would move every minute or two, and sometimes it would just stay stuck. Sometimes it showed her battery level and other times not. I started thinking she was spoofing her location. Then I started thinking she'd convinced me to share locations so that she could spoof hers as an alibi. Once, her location jumped to a residential street a mile away from her apartment and then jumped back ten minutes later. Convinced she was cheating on me, I started spoofing my location and driving by to see if her car was at home.
Finally, I showed her the screenshot of the jump and accused her of cheating. Having mostly lost my mind at that point, I went ahead and told her that I'd been spoofing my location and driving by her place.
She swore up and down she'd never cheat on me, she had no idea how to spoof her location, and had no idea what had happened with the jump - her only explanation was that she had been moving her car to park around the corner.
We were pretty much breaking up. I didn't trust her, she was angry that I didn't trust her, and I was angry that she was angry.
We do, however, both have very patient communications with each other. We sat down and talked over the whole thing. She could see why I didn't believe her. I could see why the relationship would not work if I couldn't trust her - and by trusting her, it had to be somewhat blind. That's the definition of trust.
I also realized that, having started sharing locations only a few months into our relationship, I had never developed a sense of real trust for her. We hadn't built that toolkit. Why would we need to? This was like an epiphany. I saw that the trust I needed to work on had been undermined by this technology - and worse, the technology itself was flawed. I came to believe that the jump had, in fact, been a glitch.
I was like - I want to make this work, and the only thing I can think to try now is to turn location sharing off. So we did. And things got a lot better. The last few months have felt like a new, much healthier relationship. Now we call each other, text each other little notes about what we're up to, what we did when we don't see each other. I trust her a lot more than I did before. I have to - there's no choice, other than to break up. One concession we made was to switch on RCS chat, which neither of us usually use, so we could have read receipts. That did more to chill me out than anything.
Anyway, I know this story makes me sound batshit crazy, but all I can say is - maybe location sharing works for some people, but it's not for everyone.
This makes sense. My wife and I didn’t start sharing our locations until we had already developed complete trust in each other. It has never caused us any issues, because we don’t have doubts about our trust.
For us it’s just about practicality. We have two kids and are busy with things, sometimes it is just easier to check to see how close she is rather than text and wait for a response (especially if she is driving and I don’t want to distract her!)
Read receipts are just as much of a social anxiety trigger for me; “oh they read my message, why haven’t they responded” or “they read my last few messages, why didn’t they read this one, am I boring them”. I turned those off entirely. Sometimes new acquaintances ask me why. I tell them it stresses me out and makes me overthink social interactions. Most people are amenable to this explanation.
Yeah, for me as well. Although for me, it's not because I wonder why someone hasn't responded... it's because often I'm in the middle of something and don't feel like responding right away, and I get overly concerned that the other person will think I'm being rude! So I don't use RCS with anyone besides my girlfriend. But there's an implicit agreement in it that we try to get back to each other fairly quickly. Neither of us wants the other to think we're up to something sketchy. This helped ease me into our new non-tracking reality.
As a side note, one other reason I developed such severe distrust along with the location glitches was that occasionally some of my SMS texts simply never went through to her. This led to a situation where I thought she just ignoring them, so I'd just feel kinda shitty and leave her alone, until we finally went through our chat thread together and realized she'd never gotten them.
Best use for location sharing I can think of is traveling in a convoy of more than one vehicle, when you plan to meet up for lunch somewhere along the way. At least one person in each car shares their location with each other during the trip, so you can tell that car B is 20 minutes away from the restaurant while car A is 30 minutes away, so car B can afford to stop for a bathroom break.
Then you turn off location sharing after the trip, because you don't actually want to share your location with casual acquaintances all the time. At least, I certainly don't.
It’s actually a good use case. However what we usually do is decide where to meet/stop and we wait for others to reach and until everyone arrives we relax, joke around, munch on something or so. If someone is getting too late then we call and check and if they’re fine and are just getting late then we weigh on making fun of them and pulling their legs and sometimes actually do that. Stuff like that.
I will never forget what it was like to grow up in the 80s. As a child often I was at some kind of child care. After school programs, or a neighbors house. I remember what it was like, wanting my parents to pick me up. I lived in a place that was surrounded by bullies and abusive religious zealots. Often times I would be staring out the window or looking towards the road wondering when my loving parents would come and get me and take me away from the nightmare situation. Endless hours staring, wondering, hoping. Praying for them to pick me up and take me away.
And that is why I happily allow my wife and my children to track me at all times.
So they will never feel that kind of pain and despair that a young child once felt.
Would your parents have picked you up if real time location sharing existed? I understand your story is emotional and personal, but using it as an argument why you want to share your location at all times is a bit of a non-sequitur.
It was more about not knowing where they were, or when they were coming. With technology, children can always know where their parents are, not to mention they are only one text or call away.
In addition to the other arguments presented here, I have 24/7 location sharing enabled with my wife so that neither of us has to actively remember to check our phones all the time. And if it's potentially an emergency, it is still active if one of us is incapacitated.
I'm actually not opposed to direct location sharing among one's loved ones, but I don't think being in terrible situations and praying for your parents to remove you from them is a good argument in favour of location sharing.
i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
> i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
The phones (GPS) and cell networks (towers) have your location anyway. The article -- and what the parent comment was talking about -- is social location sharing.
Although citizen tracking is a valid concern, turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable.
IIRC some of the social location sharing options have sold data in the past, eg Life 360 (I think they still sell data but claim that they've started making it aggregated/anonymous)
I wouldn't trust that. Google considered that an app-level setting previously, not a choice the user made to deny location data to Google. That kind of attitude is likely to have seeped into the organization, and "We know better" / "The user expects location to work for this even with GPS off" is quite likely still the prevailing attitude.
At the very least, trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Google has lost my trust, and assumptions of good faith have evaporated.
The fascist government won't need you to enable tracking, they can have the corporation that makes your OS silently gather it and give it to them, or simply have the phone carrier do it, again silently to the one carrying the device.
We're already all carrying a tracking device with us, willingly.
why would they need to do that? that's just how cell towers work. the government can and does also buy the location data on the market like anyone else.
I love location sharing with friends. "Find my Jerry", "Find my Anna" we call it in our friend group. It simplifies logistics, gives us a narrow but fun little window into each others' worlds.
"Is __ on the top of the mountain or waiting in the lift line?" I want my friends to find me, and my friends want to be found by me. It's nice!
"Lighthouses in the sky" was pro-slavery & pro-racism Virginia Senator John Randolph's criticism of John Quincy Adams policy to build astronomical observatories throughout the US. Adams referred to the observatories as "lighthouses of the skies" and Randolph turned the phrase during the Congress of Panama to embarrass Adams. Could be complete coincidence that Dr. Getting used the same phrase, but this time with a productive connotation.
Amongst my friends I have definitely concluded that the upsides outweigh the downsides. Amongst others, it's very convenient for meeting people. You don't need to look up the address, you just go to their bubble on the map.
It’s also good for seeing how far away someone is if you are waiting for them to meet up.
My sister was chronically late when she was younger. She’s worked really hard to be better, but still holds a lot of baggage from our parents giving her a hard time for most of her life. If one of them calls to see how far away she is, she loses it, because it feels like an attack, even if it’s not. Location sharing solves this, as we can see how far out she is without the call.
Location sharing is creepy. It's weird how many people track their partner's movement.
Back when Foursquare was a thing, Brad from Phone Losers of America would do pranks where he calls businesses and has them page someone who had shared their location.
I share my location with 10+ people, including my partner. My wife and participating friends all know, trust and love each other and none of us care if we know where each other are, but at times where we are coordinating a plan on the fly FindMy has been incredibly useful. If I’m letting weather apps and etc know and sell my location to data brokers, letting my inner circle see my location isn’t that deep.
I suppose it depends on the context. For some couples there has been some past dishonesty, and the location sharing can serve as a measure of accountability. That doesn’t mean it’s always monitored (though I’ve definitely seen some people obsess over this to an unhealthy degree), but it helps the one who was offended feel more secure and keeps the one who did the offending honest.
When you said it depends on context, I thought you’d give a positive context. Using as a means to try and restore broken trust doesn’t sound very positive. Plus, if the dishonest one knows the cell phone is being tracked, they can work around that.
I was thinking of a one person realizing they need some milk, so they see their spouse is at the grocery store already, or on their way home with one on the way. They can make that timely call if it makes sense, and if it doesn’t make sense based on the location, they can add it to the shopping list.
My sister shares her location with me and I will use it to know if it’s a good time to call. On Sunday she goes to church, but I don’t know when. I can check the location and see if she’s in a church or somewhere else, so I’m not calling when she can’t answer. I do the same thing with my dad, I will generally only call if I see he is at home, so I’m not interrupting an event he might be at.
I share my location with a couple of people who, 99.9% of the time do not need it but 0.1% of the time it is rather useful.
I do not care if they know where I am, I do not care if they have commentary about my location. I guess if they got weird about it I would turn it off but I could not imagine a situation where that would be true.
It's not "dangerous", I am as unbothered by any consequence of my location being known by them as it is possible to be.
It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information. It is also possible to have relationships with people where you actually don't care about each other's business.
> It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information
This is true, but it’s also possible to not realize your relationship is unhealthy until it’s too late. Trust should be earned, not given, especially with something as sensitive as location data. It should be years into a relationship before you even consider this unless you have proven yourself to be a truly excellent judge of character.
It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private, allowing intermediaries to get this sensitive information and either sell it or better manipulate you using targeted ads. Location data can be misused in some pretty serious ways, especially if someone wishes you harm, so it’s best to avoid handing it out if you can avoid it.
People keep saying sensitive, but I cannot think of a single thing these friends could possibly do with the information of where I am. Is this a mobster movie and they're going to hire a hitman? Are they going to follow me around and steal my car or break into my house? What exactly is the threat model I'm trying to mitigate here?
Why wouldn't I give my mother my location? Because I figure it would trigger a series of invasive or annoying conversations. That's it, that's the worst thing I can imagine, an annoying conversation.
>It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private
My phone, and Apple already know my location. I'm not changing that whether or not I share my location with people.
You’re not being creative enough, maybe because you haven’t run into bad people before. I have known of people who:
* Picked a “friend’s” lock when they weren’t home and looked around the house (I feel like they did more, but that’s all I know)
* Did various petty acts of vandalism to an ex (stealing outdoor plants and decor, throwing glass bottles into the yard, that sort of thing)
* Spray painted the car of someone that they didn’t like
* Smashed an ex’s windshield with a concrete block
And that’s just what I can think of from the top of my head. These days there’s also SWATting and other serious forms of harassment.
Location data isn’t required for this kind of harassment, but it definitely makes it easier to pull off. There are plenty of twisted people who get a kick out of hurting others, often due to petty reasons like jealousy or injured pride. And you may not know what they are capable of until you hear about what they’ve done, after the fact.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t trust anyone, but you should be judicious with your trust. If you had a safe containing $10 million in gold, you probably wouldn’t give the combination to every single one of your friends. Now maybe your 24/7 location data isn’t that valuable, but it’s not worthless. You should consider valuing it more highly.
Probably just a more fine-grained permissions system. Like allowing location to be viewed if your phone hasn't been touched in a configured amount of time, or if you're on your regular route home from work, or maybe you're specifically going out to be social and are fine with friends finding you, etc.
I just really wish there was a way to do live and on-request location sharing through Signal.
There's a plugin for OSMand but its based on a modified Telegram client, so...no.
As it is me and my wife share Google Location via maps which mostly fills in cutting out "how far away are you?" messages but it's surprisingly unfeatureful.
What I want is something where I can designate a trusted contact to be able to request an update immediately from my phone or enable live tracking - since sometimes you want to be able to get a moving dot on the map when you know someone else is driving.
> Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.
How the commentary was supposed to support your point was unclear. No such demarcation exists because people want some amount of privacy in public space? No such demarcation exists because a self righteous random person asserted privacy is a myth and anyone who disagreed with him lied to themselves at least?
I know people who value privacy because they grew up in small towns. Traffic cameras are used for surveillance also. And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.
> And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.
This. I heard an anecdote, which I can't prove but I'm sure has happened dozens of times in various places, about a guy who got a red-light ticket and suspected the yellow light was too short. He went back to that intersection and filmed the yellow lights, proving that they were shorter than the mandated-by-law 3 seconds. (I think state law, I imagine different states and countries might have different minima). He took that recording to court and got not only his ticket thrown out, but (according to the version I heard) all red-light tickets produced at that particular intersection.
> Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.
People ditch those small towns for the city to get away from small town busybodies, among other things.
I typically find the people who do track their family constantly the more neurotic. I get people explaining to me at length why they track when I never asked. I was more than once accused of being a "distant parent" when people found out I didn't track my teenager. I get exasperated looks when I say I have no idea where my wife is currently. I don't feel the need to track my family, and I really don't care at all if other people do or don't. But the 'pro-tracking' people are always trying to convince me I'm somehow in the wrong. I find that bizarre.
None of the people in the article, nor the author, mention abuse. Are you responding to the article or what you imagine the discussion to be? It barely talks about safety, it’s merely one example, and is focused on the social effects.
It even makes the point that location sharing can lead to less social interaction, contrary to your own experience.
> Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities.
No kidding, dude needs to know where everyone is AT ALL TIMES or he’s going to have a panic attack. Really makes you wonder what kind of pathology is behind these people who must have total surveillance, no matter the consequences.
Neuroticism is a property of an exchange, not an isolated phenomenon. If you're honest with yourself, you might start to see that we're all partners in a great dance.
Feel free to move to China or the UK if you prefer to be constantly watched over. I prefer freedom, thanks.
For all the problems that existed in the pre-mobile era, widespread loneliness wasn’t one of them. You don’t need 24/7 connectivity to everyone to have real relationships. You’re in here accusing people of having a mental illness because they want some privacy, yet you’re the one who seemingly needs a digital leash tying you to all your friends and family. What kind of insecurity and/or codependence is that?
Do you have a cellphone? If yes, you're being tracked. Do you have a smartphone? Well then you're being tracked by likely dozens of entities you don't even know about.
I leave my dumbphone at home most of the time. Why would I need it? You should try living in the moment more often instead of staring at a screen, it’s good for you.
If you want to, sure. It also means the rest of us can mock you for it unless you have a really good reason, like a serious medical condition or something. Don’t worry, nobody’s trying to take away your right to voluntarily give away your personal data.
What? The author isn't claiming they were abused or a victim of abuse. Abuse is only mentioned through one specific story, which was from a friend:
> In one case, GPS was used to first construct an inaccurate and accusatory narrative about a partner’s behavior that nitpicked the details [...] and then to show up unannounced to physically confront them.
I mean, this very much does sound like abuse. What are you going on about and what is your issue with the post?
I share my realtime Google Maps location with 30 people, friends, family, people from the internet.
They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time.
Why not?
The very real upside is that they casually see me while looking at Google Maps and strike up a conversation or invite me somewhere, something that's happened many times.
The article talks about private and public life... but people will go to all the effort to post the very same things their location reveals on social media. Might as well make it real time.
If you're sharing location data with people who would use it to harass you, that seems like a selection issue, not a systemic issue.
Location data is hardly private. Everyone should share theirs with as many interesting people as possible. If only I had done so back in school.
> They can see where I am, down to my address, at any given time. Why not?
To avoid some awkward conversations many people would rather avoid, I guess?
"You were nearby? Why didn't you attend blah/come say hi/etc.?"
"You're here? Didn't you say you're going to be out of town?"
"What were you out doing at {time/place}?"
etc.
If those risks outweigh the benefit of having an impromptu lunch with them, or the sonder comfort of seeing them enjoy a Friday night at home, then don't share your location with that person.
If you feel that way about everyone, then you are a very different person to me (and probably OP).
> If those risks outweigh the benefit of having an impromptu lunch with them, or the sonder comfort of seeing them enjoy a Friday night at home, then don't share your location with that person. If you feel that way about everyone, then you are a very different person to me (and probably OP).
If you feel these are the only two possibilities, we're definitely very different people.
A ton of people have mine and no one has ever given anyone shit about it.
It's mostly just 'yooooo I didn't realize you were near X' or 'how was Y? I saw it when checking where my buddy was'
Dunno maybe someone's has been messing with me all these years and I'm oblivious
I do the same thing, just smaller group. Answering the questions you’re asking just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
> just requires candor: I need some me time. I wasn’t feeling up to it. Will catch you next time.
Great! You tell them honestly, what could possibly go wrong. I'm sure nobody's feelings would be hurt when you tell them you weren't feeling like meeting them.
Now next time you drop by and still don't manage to catch them for whatever reason. Now your prior "candor" becomes a lie -- one that never needed to arise in the first place.
Maybe you enjoy getting yourself into these kinds of situations, but hopefully you can understand why others might not.
Maybe if you don’t lie to people you wouldn’t have that issue?
> Maybe if you don’t lie to people you wouldn’t have that issue?
The heck? Is it that hard for you to imagine these occurring without lying? You have X planned, and now your plans change to Y. Now you owe everyone whose invitation you'd declined an explanation, or they wonder if you're a liar. Or I guess if they're like you, they already assumed you're a liar.
But why is potentially explaining a change of plans such an issue?
Because having to keep track of who might have noticed you on the map—then explaining your choices to them—is draining and makes you feel like you can’t make a basic personal choice without justifying it.
Because sometimes people can be unreasonable. (Bad day, drunk, generally difficult personality, etc.) The more people you add to your circle, the more you are likely to run into this.
Because it’s none of their business. You are not owed my time just because I’m nearby. That’s not a healthy boundary to have. Location sharing encourages “boundary creep” that forces you to more frequently justify and reinforce your personal boundaries, adding friction to the relationship.
>Why not?
I'd be fine sharing my location with my immediate family, but they refuse it. When they wonder how close I am to being home, it isn't supposed to be such a serious thing as to have my precise GPS location. It's a reason to think about me or message me.
I've come to think that it's one of the many "problems" that many people don't actually want to solve, and being so heavily connected is taking away some of the "magic" of social behavior and replacing it with efficiency.
As a random example, waiting for a date to show up is probably more exciting than having a precise read of their location. Or, when my parents were visiting, they'd often say they were just thinking about how I'd be getting home soon.
The nice thing is that everyone has the ability to decide if they want to share their location or not. But even on social media, I only reveal my current location when I'm somewhere that I'd be open to running into people. Otherwise I intentionally wait till I'm somewhere else before posting about where I was.
My only location sharing is with my wife. It is very useful to check things like how far away she is before getting home so I can start dinner, or seeing if she has left the house yet or can I still text her to ask for her to do something at home.
My location sharing with my partner is a Signal message. “On my way home!” Works great, hasn’t failed yet. And I can still make it a surprise, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
You’re both doing what you want, which I find awesome.
We often send those, but sometimes we are busy or traffic is worse than normal. I don’t want to text to ask where she is, because she might be driving and I don’t want to distract her.
When you have two young kids, surprises aren’t usually on the table. We need to know when things are happening.
I also like having the feature in case she is in an accident or something.
My location sharing with my partner is a sudden appearance. "Hello, I'm here!" Works great, hasn't failed yet. And I can still just not show up, which is nice. Keeps things fresh, you know?
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About a year ago, I started sharing location with my girlfriend. In general I hated the idea and I'd sworn I'd never do it in previous relationships. But she lives about 20 minutes away, and she convinced me it would be nice for the reasons you outlined.
I could write a book about this, but to sum it up: It lasted about six months. I felt somewhat too watched and I started changing my behavior. Instead of texts like "what are you up to?" she would send texts like "how many drinks have you had?" Or we'd just stop checking in with each other by text, because we could just see where the other one was. It felt weird to ask "where'd you go after work?" when obviously I already knew the answer. At the same time, I also got a bit too obsessed with checking on her. I started watching for long periods, which got me noticing irregularities. Sometimes at home, her position would move every minute or two, and sometimes it would just stay stuck. Sometimes it showed her battery level and other times not. I started thinking she was spoofing her location. Then I started thinking she'd convinced me to share locations so that she could spoof hers as an alibi. Once, her location jumped to a residential street a mile away from her apartment and then jumped back ten minutes later. Convinced she was cheating on me, I started spoofing my location and driving by to see if her car was at home.
Finally, I showed her the screenshot of the jump and accused her of cheating. Having mostly lost my mind at that point, I went ahead and told her that I'd been spoofing my location and driving by her place.
She swore up and down she'd never cheat on me, she had no idea how to spoof her location, and had no idea what had happened with the jump - her only explanation was that she had been moving her car to park around the corner.
We were pretty much breaking up. I didn't trust her, she was angry that I didn't trust her, and I was angry that she was angry.
We do, however, both have very patient communications with each other. We sat down and talked over the whole thing. She could see why I didn't believe her. I could see why the relationship would not work if I couldn't trust her - and by trusting her, it had to be somewhat blind. That's the definition of trust.
I also realized that, having started sharing locations only a few months into our relationship, I had never developed a sense of real trust for her. We hadn't built that toolkit. Why would we need to? This was like an epiphany. I saw that the trust I needed to work on had been undermined by this technology - and worse, the technology itself was flawed. I came to believe that the jump had, in fact, been a glitch.
I was like - I want to make this work, and the only thing I can think to try now is to turn location sharing off. So we did. And things got a lot better. The last few months have felt like a new, much healthier relationship. Now we call each other, text each other little notes about what we're up to, what we did when we don't see each other. I trust her a lot more than I did before. I have to - there's no choice, other than to break up. One concession we made was to switch on RCS chat, which neither of us usually use, so we could have read receipts. That did more to chill me out than anything.
Anyway, I know this story makes me sound batshit crazy, but all I can say is - maybe location sharing works for some people, but it's not for everyone.
This makes sense. My wife and I didn’t start sharing our locations until we had already developed complete trust in each other. It has never caused us any issues, because we don’t have doubts about our trust.
For us it’s just about practicality. We have two kids and are busy with things, sometimes it is just easier to check to see how close she is rather than text and wait for a response (especially if she is driving and I don’t want to distract her!)
The story is crazy, but it’s real and that’s important.
It was good to read the second to last paragraph, the one with the discovery that switching off sharing improved trust.
I hope your relationship continues to improve.
How do you even spoof your location on a modern phone OS? xposed module?
Read receipts are just as much of a social anxiety trigger for me; “oh they read my message, why haven’t they responded” or “they read my last few messages, why didn’t they read this one, am I boring them”. I turned those off entirely. Sometimes new acquaintances ask me why. I tell them it stresses me out and makes me overthink social interactions. Most people are amenable to this explanation.
Yeah, for me as well. Although for me, it's not because I wonder why someone hasn't responded... it's because often I'm in the middle of something and don't feel like responding right away, and I get overly concerned that the other person will think I'm being rude! So I don't use RCS with anyone besides my girlfriend. But there's an implicit agreement in it that we try to get back to each other fairly quickly. Neither of us wants the other to think we're up to something sketchy. This helped ease me into our new non-tracking reality.
As a side note, one other reason I developed such severe distrust along with the location glitches was that occasionally some of my SMS texts simply never went through to her. This led to a situation where I thought she just ignoring them, so I'd just feel kinda shitty and leave her alone, until we finally went through our chat thread together and realized she'd never gotten them.
Best use for location sharing I can think of is traveling in a convoy of more than one vehicle, when you plan to meet up for lunch somewhere along the way. At least one person in each car shares their location with each other during the trip, so you can tell that car B is 20 minutes away from the restaurant while car A is 30 minutes away, so car B can afford to stop for a bathroom break.
Then you turn off location sharing after the trip, because you don't actually want to share your location with casual acquaintances all the time. At least, I certainly don't.
A theme park or festival would also be a good one.
In the past we’d always designate a meeting spot if people got separated. These days, location sharing can solve that and no one is ever really lost.
It’s actually a good use case. However what we usually do is decide where to meet/stop and we wait for others to reach and until everyone arrives we relax, joke around, munch on something or so. If someone is getting too late then we call and check and if they’re fine and are just getting late then we weigh on making fun of them and pulling their legs and sometimes actually do that. Stuff like that.
I will never forget what it was like to grow up in the 80s. As a child often I was at some kind of child care. After school programs, or a neighbors house. I remember what it was like, wanting my parents to pick me up. I lived in a place that was surrounded by bullies and abusive religious zealots. Often times I would be staring out the window or looking towards the road wondering when my loving parents would come and get me and take me away from the nightmare situation. Endless hours staring, wondering, hoping. Praying for them to pick me up and take me away.
And that is why I happily allow my wife and my children to track me at all times.
So they will never feel that kind of pain and despair that a young child once felt.
Would your parents have picked you up if real time location sharing existed? I understand your story is emotional and personal, but using it as an argument why you want to share your location at all times is a bit of a non-sequitur.
It was more about not knowing where they were, or when they were coming. With technology, children can always know where their parents are, not to mention they are only one text or call away.
Why not only letting them track you when you're going to pick them up, or better when they ask you to?
In addition to the other arguments presented here, I have 24/7 location sharing enabled with my wife so that neither of us has to actively remember to check our phones all the time. And if it's potentially an emergency, it is still active if one of us is incapacitated.
Or.. just messaging when you're on your way?
And not leaving them in abusive situations?
I'm actually not opposed to direct location sharing among one's loved ones, but I don't think being in terrible situations and praying for your parents to remove you from them is a good argument in favour of location sharing.
i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
> i mean this is cute in an isolated incident, until, you know, all the corporations sell that info to a fascist government who uses it to track dissidents in Portalnd.
The phones (GPS) and cell networks (towers) have your location anyway. The article -- and what the parent comment was talking about -- is social location sharing.
Although citizen tracking is a valid concern, turning on "Find my Friends" isn't going to make you any more vulnerable.
IIRC some of the social location sharing options have sold data in the past, eg Life 360 (I think they still sell data but claim that they've started making it aggregated/anonymous)
I have location services off, so at least my phone doesn't usually have my location, and neither does Google.
There are still various Google processes that likely still gather your location, and certainly your phone carrier does.
I don't think Google does if location services are off.
I wouldn't trust that. Google considered that an app-level setting previously, not a choice the user made to deny location data to Google. That kind of attitude is likely to have seeped into the organization, and "We know better" / "The user expects location to work for this even with GPS off" is quite likely still the prevailing attitude.
At the very least, trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. Google has lost my trust, and assumptions of good faith have evaporated.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/14/google-lo...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523992
That is wildly optimistic.
The fascist government won't need you to enable tracking, they can have the corporation that makes your OS silently gather it and give it to them, or simply have the phone carrier do it, again silently to the one carrying the device.
We're already all carrying a tracking device with us, willingly.
The government can also just set up their own cell tracking towers, cut out the middleman.
Or just mandate that the telcos do it and make it illegal to tell anyone about it.
why would they need to do that? that's just how cell towers work. the government can and does also buy the location data on the market like anyone else.
And yet they do that all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_use_in_United_States_...
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The article’s first narrative revolves around a phone being held captive in a police station for days because the station was closed for the weekend?
What kind of police station maintains business hours?
>What kind of police station maintains business hours?
"Sorry, retrieving property is Sgt SoAndSo's job, come back when he's here, which <checks schedule> is 2-10am Tuesday."
> What kind of police station maintains business hours?
The police station having business hours is normal in my country and several other countries that I know of.
If you have an emergency the police will come of course. The patrolling and emergency response is separate from the business hours of the station.
I believe this is true in my little town in the US as well. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.
With that said, I'm reasonably certain even our town has open hours on the weekend...
In US cities they have substations and neighborhood stations. I'd guess one of those.
I love location sharing with friends. "Find my Jerry", "Find my Anna" we call it in our friend group. It simplifies logistics, gives us a narrow but fun little window into each others' worlds.
"Is __ on the top of the mountain or waiting in the lift line?" I want my friends to find me, and my friends want to be found by me. It's nice!
"Lighthouses in the sky" was pro-slavery & pro-racism Virginia Senator John Randolph's criticism of John Quincy Adams policy to build astronomical observatories throughout the US. Adams referred to the observatories as "lighthouses of the skies" and Randolph turned the phrase during the Congress of Panama to embarrass Adams. Could be complete coincidence that Dr. Getting used the same phrase, but this time with a productive connotation.
Amongst my friends I have definitely concluded that the upsides outweigh the downsides. Amongst others, it's very convenient for meeting people. You don't need to look up the address, you just go to their bubble on the map.
It’s also good for seeing how far away someone is if you are waiting for them to meet up.
My sister was chronically late when she was younger. She’s worked really hard to be better, but still holds a lot of baggage from our parents giving her a hard time for most of her life. If one of them calls to see how far away she is, she loses it, because it feels like an attack, even if it’s not. Location sharing solves this, as we can see how far out she is without the call.
Location sharing is creepy. It's weird how many people track their partner's movement.
Back when Foursquare was a thing, Brad from Phone Losers of America would do pranks where he calls businesses and has them page someone who had shared their location.
I share my location with 10+ people, including my partner. My wife and participating friends all know, trust and love each other and none of us care if we know where each other are, but at times where we are coordinating a plan on the fly FindMy has been incredibly useful. If I’m letting weather apps and etc know and sell my location to data brokers, letting my inner circle see my location isn’t that deep.
I suppose it depends on the context. For some couples there has been some past dishonesty, and the location sharing can serve as a measure of accountability. That doesn’t mean it’s always monitored (though I’ve definitely seen some people obsess over this to an unhealthy degree), but it helps the one who was offended feel more secure and keeps the one who did the offending honest.
If you need location sharing to trust somebody, you would probably be better off not being together at all.
When you said it depends on context, I thought you’d give a positive context. Using as a means to try and restore broken trust doesn’t sound very positive. Plus, if the dishonest one knows the cell phone is being tracked, they can work around that.
I was thinking of a one person realizing they need some milk, so they see their spouse is at the grocery store already, or on their way home with one on the way. They can make that timely call if it makes sense, and if it doesn’t make sense based on the location, they can add it to the shopping list.
My sister shares her location with me and I will use it to know if it’s a good time to call. On Sunday she goes to church, but I don’t know when. I can check the location and see if she’s in a church or somewhere else, so I’m not calling when she can’t answer. I do the same thing with my dad, I will generally only call if I see he is at home, so I’m not interrupting an event he might be at.
That sounds horrible.
Trust that needs to be technologically mediated like that isn't trust.
Until someone figures out they can leave their phone at their desk and do whatever they want, anyway.
Exactly, all location sharing does is give a false sense of security. You either trust a partner or you don’t.
https://taylor.town/find-my
I share my location with a couple of people who, 99.9% of the time do not need it but 0.1% of the time it is rather useful.
I do not care if they know where I am, I do not care if they have commentary about my location. I guess if they got weird about it I would turn it off but I could not imagine a situation where that would be true.
It's not "dangerous", I am as unbothered by any consequence of my location being known by them as it is possible to be.
It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information. It is also possible to have relationships with people where you actually don't care about each other's business.
> It is entirely possible to have actually healthy relationships where people respect having information available to them and not abusing that information
This is true, but it’s also possible to not realize your relationship is unhealthy until it’s too late. Trust should be earned, not given, especially with something as sensitive as location data. It should be years into a relationship before you even consider this unless you have proven yourself to be a truly excellent judge of character.
It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private, allowing intermediaries to get this sensitive information and either sell it or better manipulate you using targeted ads. Location data can be misused in some pretty serious ways, especially if someone wishes you harm, so it’s best to avoid handing it out if you can avoid it.
People keep saying sensitive, but I cannot think of a single thing these friends could possibly do with the information of where I am. Is this a mobster movie and they're going to hire a hitman? Are they going to follow me around and steal my car or break into my house? What exactly is the threat model I'm trying to mitigate here?
Why wouldn't I give my mother my location? Because I figure it would trigger a series of invasive or annoying conversations. That's it, that's the worst thing I can imagine, an annoying conversation.
>It’s also possible to share your location in ways that aren’t private
My phone, and Apple already know my location. I'm not changing that whether or not I share my location with people.
You’re not being creative enough, maybe because you haven’t run into bad people before. I have known of people who:
* Picked a “friend’s” lock when they weren’t home and looked around the house (I feel like they did more, but that’s all I know)
* Did various petty acts of vandalism to an ex (stealing outdoor plants and decor, throwing glass bottles into the yard, that sort of thing)
* Spray painted the car of someone that they didn’t like
* Smashed an ex’s windshield with a concrete block
And that’s just what I can think of from the top of my head. These days there’s also SWATting and other serious forms of harassment.
Location data isn’t required for this kind of harassment, but it definitely makes it easier to pull off. There are plenty of twisted people who get a kick out of hurting others, often due to petty reasons like jealousy or injured pride. And you may not know what they are capable of until you hear about what they’ve done, after the fact.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t trust anyone, but you should be judicious with your trust. If you had a safe containing $10 million in gold, you probably wouldn’t give the combination to every single one of your friends. Now maybe your 24/7 location data isn’t that valuable, but it’s not worthless. You should consider valuing it more highly.
what are some good solutions to this? proximate location sharing?
Probably just a more fine-grained permissions system. Like allowing location to be viewed if your phone hasn't been touched in a configured amount of time, or if you're on your regular route home from work, or maybe you're specifically going out to be social and are fine with friends finding you, etc.
I just really wish there was a way to do live and on-request location sharing through Signal.
There's a plugin for OSMand but its based on a modified Telegram client, so...no.
As it is me and my wife share Google Location via maps which mostly fills in cutting out "how far away are you?" messages but it's surprisingly unfeatureful.
What I want is something where I can designate a trusted contact to be able to request an update immediately from my phone or enable live tracking - since sometimes you want to be able to get a moving dot on the map when you know someone else is driving.
> Even [Jane] Jacobs believed that “there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space.”
"Even"? Historically no such demarcation existed. Often it still doesn't. Compare the commentary at https://www.basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2019/9/... :
> Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.
How the commentary was supposed to support your point was unclear. No such demarcation exists because people want some amount of privacy in public space? No such demarcation exists because a self righteous random person asserted privacy is a myth and anyone who disagreed with him lied to themselves at least?
I know people who value privacy because they grew up in small towns. Traffic cameras are used for surveillance also. And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.
> And another reason people don't like them is a record of pairing them with abnormally short yellow lights.
This. I heard an anecdote, which I can't prove but I'm sure has happened dozens of times in various places, about a guy who got a red-light ticket and suspected the yellow light was too short. He went back to that intersection and filmed the yellow lights, proving that they were shorter than the mandated-by-law 3 seconds. (I think state law, I imagine different states and countries might have different minima). He took that recording to court and got not only his ticket thrown out, but (according to the version I heard) all red-light tickets produced at that particular intersection.
The National Motorists Association blog used to write about that all the time.
(They still might, but their RSS feed has died, so I no longer see their posts.)
> How the commentary was supposed to support your point was unclear.
Jane Jacobs is not at an extreme position on the scale of how much importance people assign to privacy.
> Citizens, on the other hand, don’t like red light cameras because they don’t want to be fined. They complain that the cameras are an invasion of their privacy. I don’t buy that because I grew up in a small town, and as such I understand that privacy is a myth.
People ditch those small towns for the city to get away from small town busybodies, among other things.
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I typically find the people who do track their family constantly the more neurotic. I get people explaining to me at length why they track when I never asked. I was more than once accused of being a "distant parent" when people found out I didn't track my teenager. I get exasperated looks when I say I have no idea where my wife is currently. I don't feel the need to track my family, and I really don't care at all if other people do or don't. But the 'pro-tracking' people are always trying to convince me I'm somehow in the wrong. I find that bizarre.
None of the people in the article, nor the author, mention abuse. Are you responding to the article or what you imagine the discussion to be? It barely talks about safety, it’s merely one example, and is focused on the social effects.
It even makes the point that location sharing can lead to less social interaction, contrary to your own experience.
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That's not tough love, that's just dodging a topic you dislike by insinuating that anyone who disagrees must be mentally ill.
Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities.
> Really just comes off as projection of your own insecurities.
No kidding, dude needs to know where everyone is AT ALL TIMES or he’s going to have a panic attack. Really makes you wonder what kind of pathology is behind these people who must have total surveillance, no matter the consequences.
Shaming people for having past trauma and seeking therapy is so 90s. You're living in the past, man.
*an art
You’re in for a surprise at the next paragraph too.
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Neuroticism is a property of an exchange, not an isolated phenomenon. If you're honest with yourself, you might start to see that we're all partners in a great dance.
Feel free to move to China or the UK if you prefer to be constantly watched over. I prefer freedom, thanks.
For all the problems that existed in the pre-mobile era, widespread loneliness wasn’t one of them. You don’t need 24/7 connectivity to everyone to have real relationships. You’re in here accusing people of having a mental illness because they want some privacy, yet you’re the one who seemingly needs a digital leash tying you to all your friends and family. What kind of insecurity and/or codependence is that?
Do you have a cellphone? If yes, you're being tracked. Do you have a smartphone? Well then you're being tracked by likely dozens of entities you don't even know about.
I leave my dumbphone at home most of the time. Why would I need it? You should try living in the moment more often instead of staring at a screen, it’s good for you.
You don't know me at all, but you're acting like you do.
What? Doesn't freedom precisely mean that you can share your location if you want to?
If you want to, sure. It also means the rest of us can mock you for it unless you have a really good reason, like a serious medical condition or something. Don’t worry, nobody’s trying to take away your right to voluntarily give away your personal data.
Give away my personal data to my friends and family?
What? The author isn't claiming they were abused or a victim of abuse. Abuse is only mentioned through one specific story, which was from a friend:
> In one case, GPS was used to first construct an inaccurate and accusatory narrative about a partner’s behavior that nitpicked the details [...] and then to show up unannounced to physically confront them.
I mean, this very much does sound like abuse. What are you going on about and what is your issue with the post?
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Please stop this. You've been on HN long enough to know that this kind of commenting is unacceptable.