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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Why not only letting them track you when you're going to pick them up, or better when they ask you to?
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.
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 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 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.
> 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.
That is wildly optimistic.
"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.
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.
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.
what are some good solutions to this? proximate location sharing?
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.
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.
> 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.