Make sure you know the etiquette if you keep tabs on friends and family using location tracking apps, says Elaine Moore for Financial Times.
LONDON: On every smartphone there sits a stalker’s paradise of location data ready to be shared. This treasure trove is what allows you to watch a food delivery pull up outside your door and check what restaurants are nearby.
Privacy campaigners try to limit the information we share and laptops are sold with built-in webcam covers. Earlier this month, Microsoft rowed back plans for a new feature that took screenshots of a user’s personal computer every five seconds in order to train artificial intelligence. Yet location tracking apps like Life360 are downloaded voluntarily.
But friends a decade or so younger all seem to be tracking one another with abandon. My 29-year-old cousin has the location of his girlfriend as the lockscreen on his phone. Neither finds the idea of monitoring or being monitored in this way unnerving. They say it makes them feel safer. Besides, even when you turn the features off you may still be watched. Last year, Google agreed to pay US$93 million to settle claims after it was accused of collecting location data even after users disabled the settings.
And think carefully about who you share data with. This is for family and close friends only, not new dates. But there’s a danger of snubbing here to: Putting an end to location sharing is the modern version of cutting someone out of the photos.
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