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Every smartphone has a stalker’s paradise of location data ready to be shared. This treasure trove allows you to see a food delivery arriving at your door and see which restaurants are nearby. It can also be used to track you. Location tracking is so accurate that it can pinpoint one person in a crowd. And this technology is marketed as useful, not creepy.
What is an acceptable level of online surveillance? I had assumed that we all agreed that there was no ideal. Privacy activists are trying to limit the information we share, and laptops are being sold with built-in webcam covers. Earlier this month, Microsoft scrapped 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 downloaded voluntarily.
Exactly how popular they are depends on your age. I don’t like the idea of being watched, not least because my movements are so boring. A quick survey of friends showed that those who, like me, were in their 40s or older had no idea they could use their phones this way, or had relatively little interest in doing so. As one person put it, the thought of appearing as a dot on someone else’s map conjures up echoes of dystopian devices implanted in unwilling arms.
But friends about ten years younger all seem to follow each other with devotion. My 29 year old cousin has his girlfriend’s location as the lock screen on his phone. Neither of them finds the idea of monitoring or being monitored in this way unnerving. They say it makes them feel safer.
This is not because they are blind to the importance of online privacy. It’s because they are realistic about the privacy available. They know that if you have a smartphone and don’t want to turn off useful things like maps, your location is already being monitored. If app makers, smartphone makers and advertising companies are already tracking your location, why not share the information with people you know?
Moreover, you may still be monitored even if you disable the features. Last year, Google agreed to pay $93 million to settle claims after it was accused of collecting location data even after users 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 allow users to locate a lost phone; it then evolved into sharing data between friends. The same year, Facebook unveiled Places, a location feature that allows users to share their movements. This was also the era of location-based social networking startups like Foursquare.
But what really made tracking seem harmless was the arrival of Snapchat’s virtual location-sharing map 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 her friends’ locations to playing The Sims.
If you want to start following the people you know, there is some etiquette involved. It’s fine to use tracking to check whether a friend has arrived home safely at the end of a night out, for example, but not to surprise him or her on the street. And think carefully about who you share data with. This is for family and close friends only, no new dates. But here’s the danger: putting an end to location sharing is the modern version of removing someone from the photos.
So, I ask my cousin, is it a bit like the rules surrounding cell phones? In theory you can call anyone at any time of the day, but most of us have agreed to leave each other alone. Unfortunately, this analogy didn’t work. Although my cousin and his friends like to use their phones to track each other, they wouldn’t dream of using them to make calls.
Location tracking as a safety measure, especially for older parents and children, is tempting. The risk is that this normalizes the sharing of personal information to an extent that will be difficult to undo. If you feel comfortable sharing your location with your family and friends, you may one day be happy to share it with your employer, even government agencies.
Geospatial data monitoring can also be a tool for behavior change. Research by the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego suggested that up to half of all American families use some form of tracking, ostensibly for security. But it also found that simply knowing they were being tracked could change a child’s behavior.
Few of us are immune to these pressures. The Internet is sometimes described as a panopticon in which our activities are monitored from all angles by online companies. By following each other we give this model more strength.
elaine.moore@ft.com