Tracking friends and family members on a map was once considered Big Brother-style tracking. Sharing our location with your loved ones on services like AppleS
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Search My and Google Maps are commonplace now, although those guys are far, far away.
I was in the crowded camp when live location sharing was on the scene, but I’ve come around. It is convenient. “where are you?” Instead of asking. I just want a floating head in the Find My app.
There are also security benefits. When I go on a solo hike, I can make sure someone is checking my location every now and then. That is, until I ran into a no-service zone – a situation that occasionally caused panic. (sorry mom)
Glad to see the app too. Seeing the people I love in one virtual place is incredibly comforting. Seeing a wandering friend prompted a conversation or two. “I see you’re in Tahoe. How does the fire smoke there?”
Yes, the services that parents use to track their children have become social networking sites. Depending on what you choose, you may experience unwanted side effects like a drained battery or an awkward friend breakup.
How to share and stop sharing – your area
If you’re ready to let friends and family track you, there are a few options. You can try temporary sharing. Uber and Lyft offer links to share with your contacts that include your location, driver information, and your estimated time of arrival. WhatsApp lets you share your live location, end-to-end encrypted – for anywhere from 15 minutes to eight hours. Simply tap the + button and select a location.
Apple’s Find My lets you share for an hour to the end of the day or indefinitely, while Google Maps has increments between 15 minutes and forever. When contacts open the app, they can see your current location, but not a record of where you’ve been.
Whatever app you choose, before sharing location indefinitely, think about it first. Turning off location sharing later can cause confusion. Although Find Me and Google Maps won’t let you know when you ditch their ex, it’s more obvious than meeting someone on Facebook.
Here’s how to share and revoke with Apple, Google, and the popular Life360 app:
Apple Find My It is pre-installed on Apple devices and does not work with other companies’ products. It uses system-level location, so if you have location services in settings, Find My shouldn’t eat more battery. For iPhones, as of iOS 15, Find My now shows live tracking when opened. By tapping on their floating header, you can see when the contact’s location was last updated.
To share: Open Find My and go to the People tab. Select Share my location, enter a contact name, tap Send, and choose how long you want to share your location.
To cancel: In the Find My app, tap the contact’s name. Scroll down and select Stop sharing my location. In your iMessage thread with that contact, you’ll see “You’ve stopped sharing location…” When you start sharing your location with someone, they’ll get a notification. But when you stop sharing, they don’t. However, any contacts who follow you with the Home Screen Find widget will see “Person Removed” instead of your floating head.
google maps It has a location sharing feature built into the free iOS and Android apps, making it a great choice for mixed-platform families. It can drain your battery quite a bit. The app updates your location in the background at various intervals to reduce power usage. But when a contact sees you on Google Maps, your phone sends frequent location updates, the spokesperson said.
The app will show contacts when your location was last updated. It also shows your phone’s battery level, so you can see if you’re low on juice and why your location might stop updating soon.
In Google Maps, you can notify a contact when they reach a specific location, such as school or home. The contact will see that you have set up the notification.
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Google
To share: Tap your profile photo in the Google Maps app, then tap Share from there. Tap New Share and enter the contact’s name. (iOS users should give the app “always” in local settings when sharing for more than an hour.)
To cancel: Tap the contact’s name in the Maps app > Profile photo > Location sharing. Next to “I can see your location,” select Stop.
Life 360 It’s a popular family-oriented app that unites Apple and Google, offering a driving report and two-day location history. (A $5-month subscription provides 30 days of history.) Users join “circles” and receive notifications if they are removed from a circle. If you leave a club, you will disappear from the map, but other members will not be notified.
During my tests, the app taxed my battery. According to a company spokesperson, all users experience battery life of at least 10% or less when using the app throughout the day.
Life360 offers more detailed tracking, such as a driving report that shows when you’ve reached the top speed.
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Life 360
Where does location data go?
Location data is some of the most valuable and sensitive data our devices capture. From weather to social media, many different services can collect that data and sell it to marketers or analysts, often without our knowledge. Tech companies can give your location data to law enforcement.
So should we entrust location sharing apps with our exact location? The answer varies by service:
Find My Apple: If your device and your friend’s device are running iOS 15 or later, your exact location is end-to-end encrypted. Even Apple can’t see the data, let alone share it. If you or your contact is on an older version of iOS, your location is not fully encrypted. In that case, according to Apple, the devices will send data to the company’s servers. The data will be deleted after two hours and will not be used for advertising purposes.
Apple’s Find My app only works with contacts who have iPhones.
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Apple
google maps: Google services are generally free of charge to users. Instead, Google uses the data it collects about you in search, maps, and more to serve ads.
A Google feature called Location History keeps a timeline of your location. It’s off by default across all Google services. If you enable it, Google can use your exact location from location history for advertising. The privacy policy provides the following example: “If you frequent ski resorts, you may see an ad for ski equipment while watching a video on YouTube. You don’t need to turn on location history to share your real-time location in Google Maps. At this point, your device will send the data to the company’s servers and it will be deleted shortly after, a Google spokesperson said. She did not specify the retention period.
Share your thoughts
When have you found it useful to share your location? When is it sad? Join the discussion below.
However, Google may still determine your general location based on your network IP address, search activities, or other information. (You can turn off ad personalization.) Google says it doesn’t sell users’ personal data.
Life 360: Last year, the nonprofit data-journalism website Markup reported that Life360 sold users’ exact location information—identifying information like names and emails—to nearly a dozen data brokers. Life360 says it no longer relies on bulk data sales, and the data sold cannot be used to identify you. A company spokesperson said: “Life360 ensures that the information marketed is securely encrypted and kept within a group of less than 50 people.”
You can block the sale of your data by going to Settings > Privacy & Security and selecting Don’t sell my personal data.
It still feels a little creepy that Big Tech is watching us. But nowadays, it’s often good to know that big friends and family are watching.
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Write to Nicole Nguyen at nicole.nguyen@wsj.com
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