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In every smartphone is a tracker’s location data heaven, ready to be shared. This treasure is what allows you to watch a food delivery leave your door and check which restaurants are nearby. It can also be used to track you. Location tracking is so accurate that it can identify a person in a crowd. And this technology is marketed as convenient, not scary.
What is an acceptable level of online surveillance? I had assumed that we all agreed that the ideal was none. Privacy activists try to limit the information we share, and laptops are sold with built-in webcam covers. Earlier this month, Microsoft scrapped plans for a new feature that would take screenshots of a user’s computer every five seconds in order to train artificial intelligence. However, 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 poll of friends revealed that those who were, like me, in their 40s and older either had no idea they could use the phone this way or had relatively little interest in doing so. As someone put it: the thought of appearing as a dot on someone else’s map echoes dystopian devices shoved into unwilling arms.
But friends a decade or so younger seem to be following each other with abandon. My 29 year old cousin has his girlfriend’s location as the lock screen on his phone. Neither finds the idea of being monitored or monitored in this way disturbing. They say it makes them feel safer.
This is not because they are blind to the importance of online privacy. This is because they are realistic about the privacy that is available. They know that if you own a smartphone and don’t want to turn off useful things like maps, then your location is already being watched. If app makers, smartphone makers, and advertising companies are already tracking your location, then why not share the information with people you know?
In addition, even when you disable the features, you may still be watched. Last year, Google agreed to pay $93 million to settle claims after it was accused of collecting location data even after users turned off settings.
Location sharing has been around for over a decade. Apple’s Find My app was originally released in 2010 for users to locate a lost phone; then it evolved into sharing data between friends. That 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 start-ups like Foursquare.
But what really made tracking seem like harmless fun was the arrival of Snapchat’s Virtual Location Sharing Map in 2017. Users can now see their friends grouped together as smiling Bitmoji. It looks like a game. A writer for Bustle magazine compared checking her friends’ locations to playing The Sims.
If you want to start stalking people you know, then there are some rules of etiquette. It’s fine to use tracking to check if a friend got home safely at the end of a night out, for example, but not to surprise them on the street. And think carefully about who you share data with. This is for family and close friends only, not new dates. But here’s the danger of neglect: ending location sharing is the modern version of removing someone from photos.
So, I ask my cousin, is it a bit like the rules around cell phones? Theoretically, you can call anyone at any time of the day, but most of us have agreed to leave each other in peace. Unfortunately, this analogy did not work. While my cousin and his friends are happy to use their phones to track each other, they wouldn’t dream of using them to make phone calls.
Location tracking as a security measure, especially for older parents and children, is tempting. The danger is that it normalizes the sharing of personal information to an extent that will be difficult to reverse. If you’re comfortable sharing your location with your family and friends, then maybe one day you’ll be happy to share it with your employer—even government agencies.
Monitoring geospatial data can also be a tool for behavior modification. Research from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego suggested that up to half of all American households use some form of tracking, ostensibly for security. But it also found that simply knowing they were being tracked could change a child’s behaviour.
Few of us are immune to this pressure. The Internet is sometimes described as a panopticon in which our activities are watched by online companies from every angle. By tracking each other, we give this model more power.
elaine.moore@ft.com