Stay informed with free updates
Simply register at Technology sector myFT Digest – Delivered straight to your inbox.
On every smartphone lies a haven of location data ready to be shared. This hidden gem is what allows you to see a food delivery pull up to your door and check which restaurants are nearby. It can also be used to track you. Location tracking is so precise that it can identify a person in a crowd. And this technology is marketed as convenient, not creepy.
What is an acceptable level of online surveillance? I had assumed we all agreed that neither was ideal. Privacy advocates try to limit the information we share, and laptops are sold with built-in webcam covers. Earlier this month, Microsoft rejected plans for a new feature that took screenshots of a user’s PC every five seconds 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, especially because my movements are very boring. A quick survey of friends found that those, like me, who were 40 or older had no idea they could use their phone this way or had relatively little interest in doing so. As someone put it: The idea of appearing as a dot on someone else’s map has echoes of dystopian devices implanted in unwilling arms.
But all the friends, about a decade younger, seem to follow each other with abandon. My 29 year old cousin has his girlfriend’s location as his lock screen on his phone. Neither of them finds the idea of monitoring or being monitored in this way disconcerting. 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 disable useful things like maps, then your location is already being watched. If app creators, smartphone manufacturers, and advertising companies already track your location, why not share the information with people you know?
Plus, even when you turn off the features, you may still be watched. Last year, Google agreed to pay $93 million to settle lawsuits after it was accused of collecting location data even after users turned off the setting.
Location sharing has been around for over a decade. Apple’s Find My app was originally launched in 2010 for users to locate a lost phone; then it became data sharing between friends. The same year, Facebook introduced Places, a location feature that allows users to share their movements. This was also the era of location-based social media startups like Foursquare.
But what really made tracking seem like harmless fun was the arrival of Snapchat’s location-sharing virtual map in 2017. Users can now see their friends grouped together like smiling Bitmojis. It looks like a game. A writer for Bustle magazine compared checking the location of her friends to playing games. The Sims.
If you want to start tracking people you know, then there is some etiquette involved. It’s okay to use tracking to check that a friend arrived 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 only for family and close friends, not new dates. But there’s a danger of snub here: Ending location sharing is the modern version of removing someone from photos.
So I ask my cousin: is this a bit like the rules governing 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. 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 calls.
Location tracking as a safety measure, especially for elderly parents and children, is tempting. The risk is that it normalizes the sharing of personal information to a point that will be difficult to reverse. If you’re comfortable sharing your location with your family and friends, perhaps one day you’ll be happy to share it with your employer, even government agencies.
Geospatial data monitoring can also be a tool for behavior modification. 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, apparently for security. But he also discovered that simply knowing they were being tracked could change a child’s behavior.
Few of us are immune to this pressure. The Internet is sometimes described as a panopticon in which our activities are monitored by online companies from all angles. By following each other we give more power to this model.