Localization applications now considered critical for security and logistics: NPR

One afternoon, three years ago, Chelsey Vance decided to walk around. She took ibuprofen before leaving her apartment in Nashville, Tennessee. She did not know then that she was allergic to the drug.

About the middle of the trail, she felt like she was fainting. Vance sent his roommate through iMessage and asked him to pick her up. She quickly began to lose consciousness as she entered into anaphylactic shock.

"I could feel my throat closing and I could not see anything," says Vance. "I could not find my phone to call 911, because I guess I dropped it when I fainted."

Since her roommate had her exact location, she was able to find Vance quickly and call an ambulance. Vance attributes the position sharing service as the reason why it is alive today. She now uses apps like Find My Friends to share her position with her boyfriend and close friends indefinitely, so that they can find her immediately in case such a situation reoccurs.

The story of Vance illustrates one of the most obvious goals of place sharing: security. But it is much more used in non-emergency situations. Modern relationships are defined by the constant communication made possible by smartphones. Josh Constine, editor of the TechCrunch website, said constant verification through position sharing was the next natural step.

According to Constine, launching applications such as Foursquare in 2009 and Find My Friends in 2011 marked the beginning of location sharing. But at the time, many people were reluctant to share their site and thought twice before using these apps regularly.

The sharing of position had really taken off, said Constine, when Snapchat published, in 2017, its Snap Map function, which tells users where all their contacts are, where they are on the planet. . Today, people often choose to reveal their location information to their social circles, which, according to Constine, would have been a terrifying concept before smartphone technology.

"Now we are all treating GPS as a vital utility," Constine told NPR in an email. "The standards of privacy and security continue to soften.We do not hesitate to stay in the house of a stranger via Airbnb or to drive in their car via Uber." Why should location-sharing applications be different?

NPR asked its readers why they shared their location and with whom they shared it. We received about 100 responses detailing a range of experiences with these apps.

Many appreciate them. They said apps offer peace of mind or at least make coordination more convenient. People use them to handle the logistics of traveling on the road or to check if their roommate has stopped at the grocery store on the way home. It removes the need for updates through texts and calls – you can get an answer without disturbing anyone.

Although users have not found themselves in a situation where position sharing applications have directly contributed to their security, many are using them just in case. Calvin Jordan, who lives in Alexandria, Va., Said that because of his recent move, he did not have many friends and family members in the area. It feels better to know that the people closest to him have their location, even if they are hundreds of miles away.

"If I go out to a strange place or it's late … I'll be part of a group discussion with my sister and one of my friends, those who consult me ​​on Find My Friends," says Jordan. "I'm going to go there, I'm here, I'm planning to leave at this time, if you do not see my little icon move, call me or something – make sure everything is fine." me. "

Several parents reported using the app to track their children, especially their teens who drive. Joan Rose of San Diego uses Find My Friends to follow her teenage son. She says the app reduces her worries when he's out late at night and lets him see when he gets home.

"It's really, above all, not knowing if he's doing good things," Rose said. "I know my son, it's purely for safety."

Some teens, on the other hand, have expressed frustration with parents' use of place-sharing apps to monitor them and have said that this may seem compelling. They can no longer use the traffic as an excuse for not respecting the curfew – their parents know exactly where they are.

The minor moments of tension are common consequences of location sharing, one of the most classic being the boring revelation that the friend who had promised to leave was not telling the truth.

"I would arrive at a place we were supposed to meet and where we could go on Find My Friends and see that they had not even left their house or that they had come from the to leave, "wrote Margo Morton of Louisville, Kentucky. "It made me crazy! I was afraid to look sometimes."

In addition, unexplained appearances on the application may raise suspicion, provoke more serious arguments and, in some cases, even lead to criminal harassment. One person wrote that he had revealed his wife's affair when he had found the restaurant where she was with another man. Someone else said that his ex-ex-wife had used her location to find her at her workplace and provoke a scene. According to Constine, the lines between legitimate and inappropriate uses of these applications can be blurred.

Overall, the answers reflected a common theme: location sharing was a double-edged sword. These applications provide a constant source of useful information and, in cases such as the Vance story, can be invaluable in emergency situations. But they also change social norms quickly and reveal behaviors that people were able to hide.

"It exposes the lies, which I suppose is a good thing," says Jordan. "But at the same time, it makes you start asking questions, well, what else could you talk about in our relationship?"

Abigail Clukey is an intern at the NPR National Office.