Knowing someone is tracking you is creepy. No one wants an unwelcoming invasion of privacy, but what if there are some good reasons to use location tracking services. They can offer great convenience. You can see whether your kids reached school on time or see whether your partner has left the office for home so you can warm up the dinner. These services can reduce hassles. For example, if you are going on a trip with your friends and are waiting at a pick-up point, you can see their whereabouts on a map rather than texting back and forth.
You don’t need to be a hacker or a programmer to make location tracking work. There are apps that let you know where your family and friends are, while protecting everyone’s privacy. You and other members can choose to share the location indefinitely or share it for a few hours as per everyone’s comfort. So, whether you are on a long cycle ride or taking a trip to your relative’s home, everyone can have ease of mind about your safety.
We tried out some of the best location-tracking apps, explored their features and even checked their privacy policies. Here are some of the safest location apps for your friends and family.
Google Maps
If you are an Android user, you probably don’t even need to download Google Maps. Google Maps is one of the best mapping services, and you can start sharing your location with friends and vice-versa with a few easy steps. To share your real-time location on Google Maps, ensure your Location Services are enabled.
Open Google Maps, and tap the blue dot showing your location. Tap “Share Your Location”, and choose how long you want to share your location. This can be for a certain amount of time, or until you turn off location sharing.
Choose the person or people you want to share your location with, and click “Share”. Once you have shared your location with family and friends, they can choose whether or not to share their location with you.
While Google Maps is one of the easiest tools to track your family, it requires that you turn on Location History to use this feature.
Find My
If you are an iOS or a Mac user, you probably have heard about Find My (previously known as Find My Friends). It’s a great tool to track your Apple devices and even locate items you have attached to AirTags. Now, this in-built tool can even track your friends and family.
To share your location with a person, open the Find My app on your iPhone. Tap ‘Share My Location’ and enter the name of a person with whom you want to share your location. You can also manually enter that person’s phone number or email address.
Tap Send, then choose whether you want to share your location for One hour, Until the end of the day, or Indefinitely. The person on the other end will be asked to share their location with you. If you ever need to stop sharing your location, tap the person’s name in the Find My app. Swipe down the screen and tap Stop Sharing My Location.
Find My has the best privacy policies. The location data is encrypted and sent to Apple, where it’s stored only for two hours, then deleted. Apple doesn’t use the data to target advertising.
Life360
Life 360 is the most feature-rich location tracking tool. It works on both Android and iOS devices. Once you login into the app, it creates a 6-digit code that acts like a password for joining a Circle.
You need to share the code with your friends and family to start location sharing. Each person you invite will need to download the Life360 app and create their own accounts. Every person in a circle can see each-other’s locations. Life360 recommends limiting a Circle to 10 people for the best map accuracy. You can create multiple Circles for other people such as extended family, friends, or teammates. Members in a Circle can anytime choose to stop sharing location to their preference.
Features such as Places make Life360 unique. It allows you to set up multiple locations on your map so you can be notified when your family members arrive or leave the location. Additional paid features also let you know about unsafe driving behaviours like speeding and texting while driving.
Location tracking is a powerful tool. It offers you the convenience to see where your family and friends are for their safety. However, the baseline is it shouldn’t affect anyone’s freedom. The apps we mentioned are designed for safety purposes, and not for snooping on others without their knowledge. We keep posting about a lot of content around trending technologies and apps. To make sure you don’t miss anything, keep following us on www.reliancedigital.in.
