Any app that lets us check on our kids' whereabouts quickly and effectively without taking them out of the zone (Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??) is a blessing IMO.
An app like this would be restricted just between my wife and I, and our two boys. No more than that. No more is needed. We are an 'absolute trust' group and quite frankly, the idea that any of us would want to hide our locations from each other is simply not even a thing.
I think I have a pretty good trust relationship with my kids, but there have been times where they have been half an hour late home from school or a gig etc. and the worry button gets hit. In all occurrences, it has been simple things like missing a bus, or staying back to get help with teachers etc., but those are the sorts of things that I'd like to be able to check on quickly before resorting to calling/texting.
The ability to notice something is amiss, then do a quick spot check to see "Oh, its OK, he is still on school grounds" or "He's on the number 10 bus homeward bound" is reassuring.
EDIT: I just realised that I forgot to answer your actual question re: Are my kids OK with it (the monitoring).
Neither of them have pushed back much on this. In fact, last year I developed a small iPhone app purely for the family to use to achieve the sort of tracking this Google system does. My sons were actually quite helpful in helping me design and test it out. End of the day I abandoned the app because I just didn't have enough time to maintain it, and there were other third party apps coming out that did the same thing.
As mentioned above, we have a pretty good trust relationship with our kids. Its not as if we track their every movement, and we are quite flexible with them spending a lot of time out with their friends and other sporting/social activities. It is just on those outlying times where we feel the situation is not completely 100% rosy that we like the ability to do a quick 'ping' check.
Would that work on all kids? I doubt it. But we can't project our own experiences onto other parents and kids. It can seem bizarre to those that grew up with a rebellious streak or controlling parents but it's possible to have really good and trusting relationships with your parents.
The truth for me; If I had listened to my parents, I would not be as cool. But If I had listened, I would be healthier and getting older - I realize health is happiness.
As a kid, I always meant to but often forgot.
Fwiw, most of the time in hs my parents knew more or less where I was but not specifically what I was doing. That seems reasonable to me.
Parents will worry when they don't know where their kids are - and it's normal to worry. Despite (inspite?) of our paranoid tendencies, IMO parents have a right to know where their kids are.
don't kids have a right to not let their parents know? If I decide as a teenager to go and have sex with my boyfriend, shouldn't I be free to keep that from my parents? What if my parents disapprove of him, cause he's from a "bad part of town"?
Parents worry, and that is normal, and they should teach kids how to make it manageable (i.e. ping via SMS, "call me when the show is over" or whatever), but 24/7 control is a different thing.
There are plenty of gay kids who need to hide their location from their homophobic parents.
Some parents are intensely homo/transphobic, and do not have their children's best interests at heart. It's not always about "trust".
That fears are completely normal. Been able to track your kids not so much. Please, think twice before using a technology that you don't know which long term psychological effects can have on your children.
> Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??)
When I was a child I could lie to my parents on where I was. I didn't dit it, but I have a choice. That's part of growing up. You will steal away that responsibility from them. Maybe it is not a problem, but you don't know.
It is extremely tempting to use this technologies, maybe kids right activists should lobby for laws that forbid them.
I'm a little wary of Google implementing this feature, but alas, all i really care about is that my wife and i can see each other. Especially since she takes the bus quite frequently. Likewise she often has no idea where i am in my commute, and i don't like to text her while driving.
I understand peoples concerns, but i think they need to take a step back for a second and look at the UX. The UX/Value prop is clearly there - some of us want to see where others are (assuming it's consensual of course), and that is a very valuable feature. So with that said, what needs to be done to settle the HN concerns i wonder?
The feature is useful, and highly desired for some of us. I'd love for my wife to be able to find me 24/7. Beyond that, i have no qualms about what needs to be done to quell HN concerns - just find a way to get me my feature.
Of course you worry, you're a parent. But is it your kids' burden so they have to be tracked 24/7?
1. The reason people raise concerns about Google, and less so about iOS, is that Google and Apple are in different businesses. Google is in the business of profiting off your personal data and that of your family members. Apple is not, and iOS makes it significantly harder for rogue apps to get access to personal data without the actual user's direct permission.
2. Google (Android) and Apple (iOS) place different priorities on security relative to other factors.
3. Many of the naysayers are raising issues that do not single out Android, however fair it may be to do so. There are some issues that remain the same beyond the specific platform. For example: this kind of app creates social pressure for people to be tracked by their family and show trust that they may not sincerely feel.
4. If you think they can "just" turn the feature off or "just" remove the trusted contacts when they feel uncomfortable, you are not thinking this through. These "trusted" contacts may be authority figures in the family and may be able to examine any settings done by the actual users.
5. If your kids are carrying a cell phone, it should probably be a secure phone, with strictly enforced app store policies, and with a secure OS that is not provided by a company with every incentive to gather and monetize personal and private information. Your kids do not deserve to be the targets of this kind of commercial activity. So even if you think the feature is good, it is tainted by the interests of the provider. But whether the feature is good or bad, Android is a bad way for children to get the feature.
Huh? Can you please, concretely, elaborate on how this app makes it easy for other "rogue apps" to access your personal data? Or how is this any significantly different from iCloud Find my Friends feature - especially since iCloud has very interesting exceptions for privacy data collection in EULA.
Or if I say it differently - if you actually read EULAs and what both companies collect, there is no privacy difference between Apple in Google when it comes to cloud services.
The raised concerns about tracking are VERY valid - but they are valid (as you said) for both platforms and calling iOS as "more secure" in this respect is extremely misleading and gives false sense of security. After all, iOS ships the feature BY DEFAULT, thus creating all the pressures you mentioned. Android doesn't.
An alternative take on this is that Google has more of a vested interest in securing what data they do collect and making sure it does not leak to any other party. They've generally been ahead of the curve in terms of privacy on the web, such as keeping rogue CA's in check (remember the CNNIC fiasco?), pushing for HTTPS everywhere, or making 2-factor authentication more usable.
Unless said rogue apps are written by Google, how do they help Google's business model?
Tracking information is a revenue stream. Revenue pays for content development. Content sells apps. Google profits off app sales.
Therefore, Google has a disincentive to do anything about the transparent (read: user doesn't know it's happening) third party collection of tracking information. Particularly given the noted disinclination of Android users to purchase apps, relative to their iOS peers.
Pest or cholera. At least it allows you to tinker with it, as opposed to iOS.
Sadly, that's not true anymore.
On iOS, if you jailbreak, you can still use Apple Pay, and all apps.
On Android, if you root, or modify anything, Android Pay stops working, Snapchat stops working, Pokemon Go stops working, most banking apps stop working, most games stop working.
I've been a supporter of Android since the start, but by now it's just as proprietary as iOS, with more spying and tracking and analytics, and less possibilities to tinker.
I'm not criticizing your post, just noting that all of your points are about Location Services and not the Trusted Contacts App.
Trusted Contacts just hooks into Location Services to allow the user to explicitly share already captured information with 3rd parties.
Location Services is used by tons of other apps and if you dumb it down or turn it off those apps will stop working or beg you to turn on the most granular of it's settings.
Here are some of the ways that Location Services is used:
- Google Wallet will see you're at XYZ Retail store and pop up a notification with your rewards card barcode on it.
- Google Maps will see you're at the trendy new restaurant and ask you to snap a couple photos and review the place.
- Google Now or Maps (not entirely sure which) will tell you if your commute home is going to suck or not and alert you to accidents on the road ahead.
- Google Rewards will ask you randomly/creepily "have you been to ABC and if so when?" and give you a pittance for your data.
- If someone has access to your Google Account, they can easily activate the find my phone feature and see exactly where you are without your knowledge.
Regardless of whether or not you have any of these Apps installed, if Location Services is on then it is silently tracking your location. You can see everything it tracks on your timeline (https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)
When your phone is located using the "Find my phone" feature, it pops up a notification on the phone (this phone has been located). Of course, if they had physical access to your phone in the past, they may have blocked this notification, but it is provided by Google Play Services, so that requires to block a wide range of notifications (eg. all "app update available" notifications iirc).
On the other hand, they may access your location history, if you enabled that, and see where you went in the (possibly very recent) past without any notification.
That said, the last known location feature seems like a special concern. Right now "my phone is off" is a cure for location requests from an authority, even if it carries the possibility of later action. This change creates a system where last location is available regardless, and a clearly-intentional settings change is required to alter that.
I don't know how much of this to lay on Google, since "don't build tools authority figures can misuse" would have prevented fire. But I do think there's a common failure to consider use cases like minors with authoritative parents, when it's very possible to build tools that are at least less easily misused in that situation.
1. Yes people will always raise concerns but if this saves lives and makes people safer then we should embrace it and be happy about it. 2. Yes and Android is more open in general than Apple 3. If I Richart Ruddie am leaving Baltimore City to head back to Baltimore County/Owings Mills and I want my parents to know that I am safe then I would be glad to have a seamless feature like this no? Social pressure = safety? 4. There definitely needs to be a level of control to turn the features on and off. 5. Interesting thoughts on the monetization aspect but its more about safety here you would rather have your child monetized and save their life then to not monetize or at least I hope so.
Apple 100% is profiting off you and your family members just not off of sharing data which has pluses and minuses. They have milked out that Apple Tax to build the world's richest company.
Money dictates these positions. Currently Apple has a market share of about 12% and has 103% of the profit share. This means every other phone companies combined loss money as a whole and Apple out performed them.
http://bgr.com/2016/11/04/iphone-profits-apple-samsung-share...
Apple's Achilles heel is with AI and has to do with their position with data. What a pain it was for my rebellious daughter (She buys Apple products and laughs in my face) to go from one phone to the next and it has to relearn her because things don't transfer. Apple Maps doesn't know where she use to go on her old phone etc..
Tim Cook and company will have to start collecting and sharing data between devices and spaces. This will be done to save SIRI and what I get with Google Now. You might think I am sipping the kool-aid but I believe that our data will serve us more tin the future and this present Apple stance will have to change.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3131586/apple-ios/apple...
What kind of maths is this? O.o
I trust my trusted contacts -- let me share my location all the time. (No, some backwater tab in the G+ app does not count.)
When I've discussed, generally people steer towards the creepy side of being tracked and dont like it. Maybe this version finds a middle ground as it's selling it as 'keeping you safe' while giving Google the right to track your location to sell better targeted ads. Really, the latter is what this is all about.
All that data is stored. They know all your contacts, how you write, what your interests are, where you go every day. What if suddenly the country your in makes it illegal to do X, or feel Z. They decide to arrest everyone who meets the criteria, and there's nothing you can do.
Although, you are correct now, it is ads. But the risk is SO great I really don't understand not taking precautions
The Trusted Contacts app allows you to grant people permission to ask for your location or for you to push those people your location if you feel the need. If someone asks your location who is permitted, it prompts you to approve or deny the location request and then times-out and grants it after a few minutes. The whole ask for permission to ask for your location seems awkward at best.
This grant/timeout thing completely defeats the reason why my wife and I use the G+ location sharing which is to avoid the "where are you? when will you be home?" interaction.
It's very useful, but why put it in g+ and only in the mobile version of g+!
Note that for those who have Location History turned on, this isn't adding anything.
Least the G+ feature can be set as a widget.
Yeah because that has totally been a problem I've been needing a solution for.
A young woman was abducted recently on a local trail. I don't believe she's been found yet. Perhaps this would have made some difference.
This just seems like a way for busybody and manipulative people to stir up drama.
This product is a much better version of that system. It's impervious to me forgetting to send the text and gives an accurate location rather than "somewhere in the general area served by this trailhead".
Then again, I'm in Europe, so crime rates are virtually zero, and the only risk is spraining an ankle or something.
His parents were at the finish line waiting and, apparently out of shame, he did not tell them, nor did he answer any calls. So, the organizers sent out an emergency search and rescue team. It was not for another two and a half hours that they realized that the competitor was sitting at home and choosing not to answer his phone.
I'm seeing in the comments that the level of trust in companies is higher than the trust in your government.
Both very sad things.
Maybe that's occasionally deserved.
I'm probably more paranoid about surveillance than you are. I wrote positively about this app anyway.
The average commenter here is, more than likely, like me, not really in the target demographic for this app. I'm male, reasonably strong, and capable of defending myself. I don't worry when I leave the house.
Sometimes my female friend, who is passionate about bicycling, tells me about her experiences on the nearby bike trail. Where, every day, she passes by dozens of loitering homeless individuals. Where, some time ago, a woman was dragged off her bike and had her face shattered. Where multiple women have been kidnapped. She expresses fear, but loves her sport enough to overcome it.
She rides on a multi-thousand dollar custom-made road bike that's surely appealing for someone desperate enough.
Who am I to tell her that her fears are overwrought? My physical safety isn't at stake.
For people like her, I think this app is worth consideration. For people like me, I never wanted it.
[0] With the Electoral College, you don't even need a majority of the popular vote.
What's direct about that? Companies are directly accountable to their shareholders, accountable to the general population via the government, and very indirectly accountable to their customers.
The cynic in me thinks this whole use case is intended to normalize the idea of a company always knowing everywhere you go. See? Privacy is unsafe!
This doesn't really make sense. Google already has this information. They're sharing what they already had access to with contacts you select. On the other hand, there was an interesting feature a few years ago, where you could share your location with friends without special requests. Since then it has been moved from a separate google service to google+.
What I'm saying is - this is nothing new. It's actually a new, restricted version of what's been available and happening for a long time.
Also, this likely allows them to track kids whereabouts, bypassing COPPA via implied consent.
1. Make it hard/impossible to be forever telling your location to someone (it's unclear if that's what the feel unsafe mode does in the first place, or if it just broadcasts it once)
2. Make it easy to 'enter an alternate location' to tell the inquirer
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/12/goog...
As a parent, I find this tremendously useful. This is specially important for people in certain countries where walking/driving home at night is realistically dangerous.
Waiting 10 minutes for a GPS update doesn't seem to actually increase safety in any noticeable way.
I haven't downloaded the app myself. However, I was under the impression the 'virtual walk' was some separate feature that when turned on, allows the person to monitor your whereabouts in near real-time. (like could watch a tiny dot moving on a map as you walk).
One update every 10 minutes is way too infrequent. I feel like the majority of walks people could use this with would take less than 10 minutes ...
Thanks but no thanks.
Be a science, engineering, and technology company, Goddammit!
Can someone brave please put their foot down and say enough? Someone?
And, it's even so much worse because they make it seem like they're such good guys by releasing these 'free' or 'cheap' services. It's just outright deceptive.
This is the problem here. I find myself infuriated and helpless talking to my friends (non tech) about not trusting Google or any provider for that matter with their entire digital life. They look as if I'm the non sensible one. They must be thinking "Why is he being an idiot by saying no to free stuff?"
It is scary to think that one company knows (1) What you search for, (2) What videos you watched in the past, (3) Where all you have been (Google Maps), (4) What you like to read (Google News), (5) Who are your friends, what things you buy, what are your personal conversations about, Which flights you check-in to, What other subscriptions you have, and much more (Gmail).
Too much power can be easily derived when this data is put together. For example, they can easily profile a person's political leanings based on these.
It is even worse that they are in the advertisement business that tries to create a bubble for yourself and keep feeding you digital information based on what you already like, and not an unbiased view of the world.
For example, if I read about Republican party once, and had one email from Republican campaign, then I start to see Republican Ads all over my digital life. Of course, that influences my view of the political world. It is like being imprisoned by one's own past.
Hopefully, things will change, and people will realize that there is no free lunch before it is too late.
And this:
>But if you’re unable to respond within a reasonable timeframe, your location is shared automatically and your loved ones can determine the best way to help you out.
This does not seem like consent.I can think of at least a 100 situations where I was not near my phone and yet do not want to send my location.
Moreover how is this different from messaging someone/calling someone to ask them where they are? The only time I am trying to reach a person and cannot reach them is when they are out of coverage range.At that time, no app would make a difference.
This is nice when its a part of other apps (Whatsapp,Uber etc) .On its own, location based information as being the only purpose can prove to be quite disastrous.
Edit 1: People seem to miss the intricacies of human relationships here.I'd like to see folks tell their parents/loved ones/other close beings how they do not want to add "trusted contacts" and share their location continuously.
Sounds like the consent is explicit at the time of configuration. As long as it's a separate app an opt-in, I don't think this is bad.
More creepy is when it becomes a part of Android itself and someone can add themselves as "Trusted" either via physical access or an exploit. It's a stalker's dream.
Then don't install the app, man.
I would just say, "hell no!", and leave it at that. If they are close to me, they will understand. In fact, they'd understand enough to not even ask.
Google is already tracking your location all the time if you're in the market for this product. This just exposes that data for what seems like a very useful user feature.
I've lately been getting into the habit of turning location services off unless I actually need them on, and I would recommend it. It's a shame my phone gets my location behind my back without any indication by default.
Install the app, start beacon, send anonymous and platform independent link, done.
Optionally customize location technology (gps/network/passive) and beacon interval (from the default GPS/1 second).
No registration, no contacts, nothing else.
You choose when you're sharing your location and with whom.
Partially inspired by the old Google Latitude.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emilburzo....
The truth is, if you trusted your kids, you wouldn't need the ability to obtain their exact location without having to ask for it. Parents who trust their kids will already know where their kids are supposed to be, or will just ask them.
On the other hand, I see no problem with the feature that allows you to request location and will automatically send location after a long non-response.
Of course, most kids (beyond a certain age) are going to occasionally go places their parents aren't comfortable with. This is a normal part of growing up and it shouldn't be impossible IMO. Even in particularly bad or dangerous cases, I would feel this calls for a normal punishment (maybe?). No TV, chores, etc. Not constant location tracking.
They don't need to specifically spell out that use case with parent/child characters.
It seems obvious to me that this will enable parents (all kinds, good and bad) to track their kids with a pretty scary level of control.
But you're right in that this isn't just restricted to parents and children. In my post just substitute parent/child with a controlling boyfriend/girlfriend.
I've got an android phone but my wife has an iPhone, does that mean this is useless for us?
Edit, it's in the works:
If you're an iOS user, click here to get notified when the iOS app is available
Owntracks hasn't been too bad for this; there are clients for iOS and Android and the the backend is self-hosted.
The only problem I've encountered with it is that the Android client has shown some instability from time to time, with high battery drain or missed location updates.
> This new personal safety app lets you share your location with loved ones in everyday situations and when emergencies arise — even if your phone is offline or you can’t get to it.
I know advertising is a trillion dollar industry. But, you'd think that Google, of all companies, would be the ones to create real innovation and value without falling to the lowest common denominator.
"con people into letting Google track them" - how does this enable any _more_ tracking than existed yesterday? The only thing I see it enables is to share the data that already exists about the user with the people that user appoints (and trusts, hopefully).
Disclosure: Google employee, but nothing to do with location services.
blog.google
And the "Don't be Evil" slogan has never been removed. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
> If you can't find a friend and become worried about their safety, Messenger could one day let you send a request to see their location. A timer would begin on the friend's phone that gives them a chance to approve or deny the request. If the timer expires on its own, their location would be sent to you automatically.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-reviewed-cool...
This is for people who live in unsafe areas and have trusted family member than they do want to watch over.
This is an app that should have been released in India immediately after Nirbhaya incident. For a Company thats supposed to move fast, Google definitely blew timing of launching such a feature.
It used to be that certain truths were only know between two people, but now for many, it will be those two people, and Google.
Even if it were any other company, the totality of awareness a single organization has, from childhood on up should give us some pause.
Microphones, accelerometers, cameras, GPS, and now annotated depth of relationship, instead of presumed depth inferred from ancillary metrics.
At this point it's getting a little strange.
With software and services these days, there's almost nothing people won't consume. It's as if people will eat everything in a package labeled as food, even if most of the contents are inedible.
More and more, it feels like people know they're eating fish hooks, but maybe they'll pass the foreign objects they've swallowed, before any fisherman tries to tug the line and set the hook.
But even if you or I don't buy in, when everybody else does, the outliers still get hooked and still lands in the boat, just by implicit association and proximity.
The stakes are raised ever higher with each beat of this game. It's like the quote from Apocalypse Now:
Ah, man... The bullshit piled up so
fast in Viet Nam, you needed wings
to stay above it.I very often wish for something similar, for instance when my mother is running a bit late in a park. I don't want to mess with her jogging or walk. But I'd like to be sure she's still fine.
Thing is, except for the current generation, smartphones are often silenced and forgotten in some pocket. So unless it's an invasive constant-on tracker .. it wouldn't work in my case.
Would be great if we wouldn't have to assign the "trusted" status to Google(or any other 3rd party) too in order to use the app.
Basically tell them to wait inside while I share my location. Then have it alert them when I'm nearby so they can come out.
This would be really helpful for the airport situation, as I wouldn't even need to park.
My money is going to be on "not very long".
OK Google, we got the whole point of this app.
Nevertheless, it's a useful feature and can help many.
Your location will be auto shared in 4min 59seconds.
Loud Music Notification Not Audible
Son is in Strip Club. Thank you.
- you are encouraged to use your phone even more, because doing so signals to your loved ones that you're ok. Using your phone pretty much means sharing even more data with google, watching their ads and buying stuff from their app store
It's a pure win. For google.
Just kidding. I like the idea.