today the guardian almost wrote something about a real concern that totally happened with sane people
Sounds like trust issues
If you have to use these things in a relationship, then you already have a problem.
This is the correct take.
When we need to know each others location, we share it via element / matrix. Our own server, so no third party.
Happens maybe four times a year.
(Also, do you just always have location services enabled?? IMO it’s a battery drain, I pretty much only enable it for this and while I need to navigate)
Nobody to answer to (and share my location).
Despite being somewhat aware of the privacy concerns of having location services always enabled, the potential of having access to finding my phone based on the service to find it (Apples and Googles feature) is more important (to me).
Same reason I have cellular always enabled.Main reason I keep location services enabled is for geo-tagged photos.
At first I always kept it disabled because of privacy trust issues (e.g. sharing a picture might not always strip the geotags) but since going on a vacation in sri lanka and being able to trace back a picture to a location it became a very useful feature.Example from my vacation in Sri Lanka:
You’ll never be able to stop someone that wants to cheat. Best you can do is be funner and sexier than anyone else your partner might be around. Never understood why that’s so hard for some people.
That’s the gist of the success of my marriage. Even before we met, we both had reached a point of maturity where we were confident in ourselves as single people, and then from that solid base you can build the relationship in a healthy way. We both try to be the best to our partner, while being ultimately independent. These over-jealous people are using their relationship as a crutch for life so they’re terrified of it going wrong. Either that or they’re guilty themselves and projecting.
So essentially very good friends that chose to live together + benefits of being in a deeper relationship?
Sounds healthy indeed! Wish you the best to keep that bond :)
If my partner could check my location at any time, how would I keep bday and anniversary gifts secret? The places where I go to buy things for her are not places I would normally go. She only has to randomly check one time when I’m at an unusual location for her to ask why and then I have to lie. Not worth it.
We use temporary sharing (can limit to one hour) when meeting somewhere. Beyond that, it’s a potential liability.
Example: she once got upset that I wanted to go to the mail room (apt building) alone and didn’t want her to go with me. She wanted to know what I was hiding. Turned out to be her bday gift and it was just in the commercial packaging with a shipping label. I let her go get it and she’s never been suspicious of my motives since (this was at the very start of our relationship and we hadn’t established the level of trust that we have now).
Anyway, again, the one-hour sharing is all we need.
I can’t believe the number of people in here with paranoia and shitty relationships that can’t communicate with their “partner”
RIGHT??? Jesus Christ people… Get some therapy
My wife only asked me to ‘follow’ her with location sharing because there was a creepy dude in the area who was approaching women. Otherwise we trust each other enough and actually communicate about the things we do. Plus we don’t cheat on each other - there’s enough stress in life without adding to it lol.
Fun fact, location sharing is literally a form of communication. Super convenient. This thread is filled with people in shitty relationships. Yikes.
You realize you are also sharing your location with third parties or you havent figured that out yet? lmao
If you own a smart phone, so are you.
The thread is literally talking about options that enable extra surveillance on your smart phones lmao
Me and my partner share locations. Never once have we done this. It’s purely a logistical thing. 10x faster to check someone’s location when you’re supposed to meet them instead of testing them “wya”.
Same. I don’t even recall setting it up until I stumbled on it one day and could track my wife. I pulled a few pranks until I revealed my hand but we’ve never turned it off. There’s nothing malicious about it and we’re both happy to keep it on.
Yeah, exactly. So great to be able to say, oh, she’s about 15 minutes away, so I’ll start making dinner. Much easier and safer than texting while driving, too.
We originally set it up so she could make sure I wasn’t laying in a ditch somewhere from a cycling crash.
Same. For this to be a problem, you must first have other problems.
How old are you guys, if you don’t mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don’t see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they’re being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.
I’ve never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I’ve never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don’t share location. I don’t even keep my location activated for my own use unless I’m actively navigating somewhere new.
We’ve got plenty of “normal” problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
I don’t mind my girlfriend knowing where I am because I’m not cheating on her. The only time it gets a bit weird is if me and my mates are doing something a bit stupid, one time we went to one of those trampoline centres at like 10:00 p.m. because they were having an adult night. We pushed to get massively over excited about trampolines and I ended up getting questioned about it in the morning. But hey she definitely knew I wasn’t cheating on her there she just thought I was being weird
I’d rather not disclose my age on this account, but, let’s just say we’re not newly married.
I will admit my statement about location sharing only being a problem if you’ve already got problems was a bit too binary. The issue is more nuanced.
I see you’re focusing on the cheating aspect, which to your credit is what the OP is all about. But from our perspective, that’s not even an issue or a use case for the technology. We have full trust in each other. The technology is simply useful for other reasons.
Did she make it to work in the snowstorm or rainstorm?
Huh she’s usually home by now, is she unconscious in a ditch or just stopped at the store?
Dinner is almost ready, I just need to put this in the oven so it’s ready to come out the second she walks in the door, let me make sure she’s actually on her way home. Oh, she must have gotten held up at work, I’ll wait a few more minutes.
Stuff like that. Yeah there’s other ways of solving those problems, and that’s fine too, we just prefer the convenience.
We don’t share locations because we don’t trust each other, we share because it’s convenient. I guess you could say we trust each other not to go crazy with it 🤷♂️
We have married friends who won’t share with each other, and that’s fine too.
I’ll retract my earlier statement. Location sharing is a sensitive subject, with lots of facets. Sharing or not is a personal choice. And while there can be practical benefits, I think most people would agree that using it for cheating prevention is… Unhealthy.
I’m 40 and have done this with partners.
But also, they and I have an open relationship. If they found me in the bed of another, the reaction would an excited inquiry of if I had fun.
I simply trust him enough
but what people are saying is it has little to do with trust: it’s a utility… in fact, the trust is flipped: i trust my partner to have my location, and only look at it for things like checking how far away i am for my benefit
It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems
you’re allowed to feel that, but that’s absolutely not true. given the safety and utility aspect, it FEELS to me like if you don’t trust your partner to have and not abuse your location data then you must have other problems
Seems like the underlying tension is wether being surveiled at all is inherently a violation.
If it is, then your partner doing it might feel like a lack of trust.
for my benefit Its not a benefit if you don’t like being tracked
If not, then it’s just a practical tool, might as well use the data if it’s getting captured anyway.
surveiled
surveillance implies active, constant, and surreptitious… i would not classify mutual location sharing as any of that: it’s passive, occasional, and well-known and consented to by both parties
If you’re doing this through Google or whichever company is facilitating, then I would say that’s the party doing all of the things listed.
But yes, I presented it in the context of just the two parties, so your point is still valid
One of the ways I knew my marriage was over, he disabled location services and left them off for months and then years. I followed when I started fucking other people.
To share my location with my partner I need to share it with a third part also and I’m pretty selective about that so I never even signed up for this kind of thing.
I use location services but just leave them off until I need them. I’m not super hard to find anyways
That’s creepy af
Routinely seen this cause drama between people with poor communication.
Nosy friend with it? Get ready for I’m coming by or what are you doing there texts.
know some people who use it to pick up drunk friends just in case. For emergencies. Do they use it like her? Noooooooopeeeee
Most people lack the maturity for this. It skeeves me the fuck out.
Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I’m turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.
A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it’s a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it’s still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person’s feelings by turning it off 🙄
I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂️
Why would you want to share your location so third parties can have access to it?
Oh 1000%
Id tell someone to fuck off so quick.
Some people are enablers for those kinds of friends. Others have no problem with it. Ex and family all shared. They’d all be in each other’s shit and were a ok with it. Was so odd to see being the polar opposite.
Vile.
I trust my wife, and she trusts me. We trust each other not to ask for stupid brain-poisoning shit that humans weren’t meant to have access to that could one day blow up horribly.
I don’t have her passwords, she doesn’t have mine. Our phones are locked. I could technically see what she’s doing online I suppose via traffic snooping in the router logs but the day I feel the urge to do something like that is the day I kill myself for having abandoned basic moral principles.
We’re apes, we have brains built for avoiding snakes in tall grass and finding water and berries. You poison yourself with surveillance, you feed your worst and most destructive impulses. Practice keeping secrets, practice being okay with not knowing. Trust isn’t surveillance, trust is knowing that if something fucking mattered you’d be told.
edit: I want my wife to be able to break my heart because if she does she’ll have a good reason for doing so. That is what trust is.
I don’t have her passwords, she doesn’t have mine.
Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death. It’s good to have some way for someone you trust to get your online accounts when you pass away so that everything can be concluded and canceled and sentimental content preservation and all that.
For my relationship the means to gain access to my password manager are available in the case of an emergency. Maybe shove the credentials in a bank security box and put access to it into your will if you don’t feel you can trust your partner with the knowledge while you are alive.
Obviously we have wills lmao
It’s only vile when you project insecurities or bad intent…
We both know each other’s passwords for everything. We use a shared database for it. We both know each other’s phone, unlock codes and often through laziness will just use each other’s phones for shit. We shared the same bank accounts, we don’t have separate money. We share the same vehicles…etc
What’s mine is hers, what’s hers is mine. Except literally.
We also both have each other’s location. What do we use this for? Essentially nothing except when one of us is traveling, or someone is feeling neurotic/worried. The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn’t just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
We don’t hide things from each other, we’ve explicitly built a relationship of openness and trust, brought on by us actually_not_ trusting each other for a long time. We are completely transparent, and you know what this has helped build? Trust. Know what it has torn down? Insecurities. It’s been great.
Would recommend.
The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn’t just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.
Bless you but the moment I start being afraid of my partner dying everytime they leave the house will be the moment I’m getting back in touch with my psychologist.
Never went to work in a snowstorm? Or heavy rain?
I’m not OP, but my wife and I share locations, it’s endlessly convenient for coordinating. Never abused.
Your sanguine naïveté is enviable. Or maybe you’ve nobody that matters to you.
I’m in the same place as you with my spouse, but we didn’t start with not trusting each other. I just never worry about my spouse knowing things about me—I cannot imagine what I wouldn’t tell her anyway.
My spouse has (multiple) physical journals lying around the house. I would never read them—she doesn’t worry about hiding them.
I’m exactly the same. I get that it’s not for everyone. I understand that, and respect it. But I hate people framing this as you having a trust issue.
It’s the opposite of a trust issue. I trust my wife to be responsible with my bank accounts. I trust my wife to see my location because I also trust my wife to only bother checking if she has a reasonable reason to do so, and to not be a weird paranoid freak if I’m somewhere she doesn’t expect. I trust my wife with the password to all my online accounts because it’s easier to just share a Bitwarden than it is to segregate everything, and I completely trust her to not invade my privacy.
The thing is, our lives are online. If I get hit by a bus or something, I don’t want her to have to deal with my death while ALSO figuring out how to convince banks and insurance companies and whatnot to let her in. Much easier to just share my Bitwarden with her.
I’m not in some panopticon, worrying “Oh no, what will my wife think about me being within 500 yards of an ex’s house” or whatever because I totally trust her to trust me. It’s just not an issue.
You were so untrusting you had to go to those lengths to make it so there is no way to lie to each other and you say that’s a good thing?
Therapy would be better for you than a panopticon.
What if your partner wants to run away from you? Do you not trust that they would have a good reason?
All they would have to do is turn location sharing off, and change passwords. More likely they would talk about it and agree to split rather than just run off. You know, like adults.
You are obviously not a woman.
You’re literally inventing scenarios.
Uhhh, I trust her which is precisely why she has my passwords. Are you guys teenagers or something?
Also, location sharing is literally a form of communication. What if there’s an emergency?
Why would you want to give third parties access to your locations?
Yes we’re teenagers. We’ve been married 15 years, ceremony was when we were three.
Privacy is important, have you never kept a diary? Do you film therapy sessions lest your partner not know what you discussed? Shit with the door open? You don’t need justification for wanting privacy, you need privacy so when you have a good reason for it nothing looks different.
What if there’s an emergency?
What if there is? Get help, that’s an insane fear to live with. If I am unconscious there’s nothing to do anyway, the hospital or whatever will find her details in my purse and call. What the fuck am I going to do, sit there watching the dot on the map and calling 000 if it stops moving? You are a lunatic, we have society to take care of us while we’re out and about and emergency beacons if you’re like camping beyond the black stump or sailing the Pacific.
I imagine this form of abuse is done by sociopaths that convinced their traumatised partners this is actually a good thing.
All the people in this thread that they do it for years and it’s normal? Sociopaths.
My wife has done courses on warning signs for abusive relationships as part of some mental health first aid certification stuff.
2 biiiiiig red flags are insisting on surveillance and not letting people have separate finances. We have a combined account sure, and also pocket money accounts and whatever else. For all I know she’s set up a trust. I mean I don’t think she has because she’d probably tell me but she has the freedom to do so.
People don’t have the emotional maturity to deal with this tool.
Starting this by saying: Using tracking apps to see what someone’s doing 24/7 or worrying about them cheating is insane and is a solid NO, full stop.
But I do understand why people use tracking apps, and I wish we had good FOSS alternatives. A tracking/location sharing app where the trackee can turn it on/off anytime they want (after using a password/biometrics, to prevent others from messing with it), so loved ones can be sure you made it to your destination.
I don’t want people stalking their kids, judging their friends for the places they go, surveiling if someone’s a cheater, or worst of all, having their data be sold by the shitty companies that run these services.
I’ve read stories that have scared me and made me wish I could do something like that when I’m out late. I had to (unfortunately) use Live360 during a field trip in another country cause the teachers needed to keep track of us. I understand safety-wise that these apps are vital
I wish there was one that didn’t require nearly every phone permission all the time.
I’ve setup Hauk for my dad to broadcast his location while delivering. It is only activated when he activates it, but it also works if you want to share location with a specific group of people. It has an app and a website, and can be password protected. It also records history and speed, but history can be turned off.
It is not very robust or particularly well coded, but it is a nice little FOSS app that works, but has to be self hosted.
After 30 years of marriage, my wife floated the idea of turning this on. I looked at her like she had two heads.
Why would anyone be willfully surveilled? You know its not just your partner that has access to that data when you have location services enabled.
Found Hank Hill’s neighbor, Dale.
lol do you think your phone isn’t normally recording your your location data even without this feature turned on?
lol Do you think its not made worse by turning it on?
