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Every smartphone is a stalker’s paradise full of location data just waiting to be shared. This treasure trove lets you watch a food delivery service pull up to your door and see what restaurants are nearby. It can also track your position. Location tracking is so precise that it can pinpoint a single person in a crowd. And this technology is marketed as convenient, not creepy.
What level of online surveillance is acceptable? I assumed we all agreed that it would be ideal if there was none at all. Privacy activists are trying to limit the information we share, and laptops are being sold with built-in webcam covers. Earlier this month, Microsoft pulled plans for a new feature that would take screenshots of a user’s PC every five seconds to train artificial intelligence. Yet location-tracking apps like Life360 are being downloaded voluntarily.
Exactly how popular they are depends on age. I don’t like the idea of being watched – not least because my movements are so boring. A quick poll of friends found that those who, like me, were in their 40s and older either had no idea they could use their phone in this way, or had relatively little interest in it. As one put it: The thought of appearing as a dot on someone else’s map brings to mind dystopian devices implanted in unwilling arms.
But friends who are about ten years younger seem to stalk each other without restraint. My 29-year-old cousin has his girlfriend’s location as a lock screen on his phone. Neither of them finds the idea of being monitored or being monitored in this way disturbing. They say it makes them feel safer.
That’s not because they’re blind to the importance of online privacy. It’s because they’re realistic about the privacy available. They know that if you own a smartphone and don’t want to turn off useful things like maps, your location is already being monitored. If app developers, smartphone makers, and advertising companies are already tracking your location, why not share the information with people you know?
Plus, you can still be tracked even if you turn these features off. Last year, Google agreed to pay $93 million to settle lawsuits after the company was accused of collecting location data even though users had turned off the settings.
Location sharing has been around for more than a decade. Apple’s Find My app was originally released in 2010 to help users locate a lost phone. It later evolved into sharing data between friends. That same year, Facebook introduced Places, a location feature that allowed users to share their movements. This was also the era of location-based social networking startups like Foursquare.
But what really made tracking harmless fun was the introduction of Snapchat’s virtual map for sharing locations in 2017. Users can now see their friends grouped together as smiling Bitmojis. It looks like a game. A writer for Bustle magazine compared checking their friends’ locations to playing The Sims.
If you want to start tracking the people you know, there are a few rules to follow. It’s OK to use location to check, for example, if a friend got home safely after a night of drinking, but not to surprise them on the street. And think carefully about who you share data with. This only applies to family and close friends, not new dates. But there’s a danger in neglecting here: stopping location sharing is the modern version of cutting someone out of your photos.
So I ask my cousin if it’s a bit like the rules for cell phones. In theory, you can call anyone at any time of day, but most of us have agreed to leave each other alone. Unfortunately, that analogy doesn’t work. My cousin and his friends like to use their phones to track each other, but they wouldn’t dream of using them to make phone calls.
Location tracking as a security measure is tempting, especially for older parents and children. The risk is that it normalizes the sharing of personal information to a degree that is difficult to reverse. If you’re comfortable sharing your location with your family and friends, you may one day be comfortable sharing it with your employer—even government agencies.
Geospatial monitoring can also be a tool for behavior change. Research from the University of California, San Diego’s Department of Psychiatry found that up to half of all U.S. families use some form of monitoring, ostensibly for safety reasons. But it also found that just knowing they are being monitored can change a child’s behavior.
Few of us are immune to these pressures. The internet is sometimes described as a panopticon, where our activities are monitored from every angle by online companies. By monitoring each other, we give this model more power.
elaine.moore@ft.com