Google Trusted Contacts
blog.google
blog.google
1. The reason people raise concerns about Google, and less so about iOS, is that Google and Apple are in different businesses. Google is in the business of profiting off your personal data and that of your family members. Apple is not, and iOS makes it significantly harder for rogue apps to get access to personal data without the actual user's direct permission.
2. Google (Android) and Apple (iOS) place different priorities on security relative to other factors.
3. Many of the naysayers are raising issues that do not single out Android, however fair it may be to do so. There are some issues that remain the same beyond the specific platform. For example: this kind of app creates social pressure for people to be tracked by their family and show trust that they may not sincerely feel.
4. If you think they can "just" turn the feature off or "just" remove the trusted contacts when they feel uncomfortable, you are not thinking this through. These "trusted" contacts may be authority figures in the family and may be able to examine any settings done by the actual users.
5. If your kids are carrying a cell phone, it should probably be a secure phone, with strictly enforced app store policies, and with a secure OS that is not provided by a company with every incentive to gather and monetize personal and private information. Your kids do not deserve to be the targets of this kind of commercial activity. So even if you think the feature is good, it is tainted by the interests of the provider. But whether the feature is good or bad, Android is a bad way for children to get the feature.
Pest or cholera. At least it allows you to tinker with it, as opposed to iOS.
You can't use it for a non-trivial amount of time without constantly reinstall it. You can't share it with your friends. You can't make it integrate with anything else on the device.
You can tinker with it in the same sense that you have freedom of speech in a solitary confinement cell.
Oh, and only if you also paid thousands for a glorified license dongle.
Sadly, that's not true anymore.
On iOS, if you jailbreak, you can still use Apple Pay, and all apps.
On Android, if you root, or modify anything, Android Pay stops working, Snapchat stops working, Pokemon Go stops working, most banking apps stop working, most games stop working.
I've been a supporter of Android since the start, but by now it's just as proprietary as iOS, with more spying and tracking and analytics, and less possibilities to tinker.
Android has been losing openness, iOS has been gaining it, they've finally met in the middle with the Android 7 release.
So not the same, then.
Huh? Can you please, concretely, elaborate on how this app makes it easy for other "rogue apps" to access your personal data? Or how is this any significantly different from iCloud Find my Friends feature - especially since iCloud has very interesting exceptions for privacy data collection in EULA.
Or if I say it differently - if you actually read EULAs and what both companies collect, there is no privacy difference between Apple in Google when it comes to cloud services.
The raised concerns about tracking are VERY valid - but they are valid (as you said) for both platforms and calling iOS as "more secure" in this respect is extremely misleading and gives false sense of security. After all, iOS ships the feature BY DEFAULT, thus creating all the pressures you mentioned. Android doesn't.
iOS does offer a slightly nicer three tiered request strategy over Google's yes|no. iOS let's you grant location access only when the app is active
[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
That's because they count all the pings of devices that answered across the globe in a sliding window and that is a hugely different number than actual maket share across US and EU and comparable markets. Sure we can then go into details about how poor Indians / Chinese / Africans need secure phones too (and I agree!), but those people have no means to afford an iPhone either.
(And no, sorry, I can't provide you with NDA protected market data :/ )
The pretty large plurality (if not majority) of Android devices in the wild don't have have Google's services installed and many of those also get no software updates -- so they're stuck on what old ROM they came with, probably Lollipop.
Of course, thanks to the Android ecosystem, it will take another year or two until a significant portion of people actually switches to devices running Android 6.
Slower than iOS yes, but not as alarming anymore.
[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
Apple 100% is profiting off you and your family members just not off of sharing data which has pluses and minuses. They have milked out that Apple Tax to build the world's richest company.
Money dictates these positions. Currently Apple has a market share of about 12% and has 103% of the profit share. This means every other phone companies combined loss money as a whole and Apple out performed them.
http://bgr.com/2016/11/04/iphone-profits-apple-samsung-share...
Apple's Achilles heel is with AI and has to do with their position with data. What a pain it was for my rebellious daughter (She buys Apple products and laughs in my face) to go from one phone to the next and it has to relearn her because things don't transfer. Apple Maps doesn't know where she use to go on her old phone etc..
Tim Cook and company will have to start collecting and sharing data between devices and spaces. This will be done to save SIRI and what I get with Google Now. You might think I am sipping the kool-aid but I believe that our data will serve us more tin the future and this present Apple stance will have to change.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3131586/apple-ios/apple...
What kind of maths is this? O.o
How is that kind of mangling of numbers useful except for stroking Apple fans?
...
Even though, on second thought, we should start putting "Making 1400% of profit!" on our marketing materials as well. Has a pop to it :)
Percentages are ratios. when you are over a 1:1 ratio (AKA 100%) and then is over 1:1.5 or 1:1.03
Net loss Android = -$3,000,000
> What kind of maths is this?
SORRY - Above 4th Grade Math
Sorry Snarky and not trying to be a jerk but TRYING to just make a funny commentary on society. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to sit in a room of very intelligent people and they have no math skills!!!! How is it acceptable to say "I'm not good in math."
An alternative take on this is that Google has more of a vested interest in securing what data they do collect and making sure it does not leak to any other party. They've generally been ahead of the curve in terms of privacy on the web, such as keeping rogue CA's in check (remember the CNNIC fiasco?), pushing for HTTPS everywhere, or making 2-factor authentication more usable.
Unless said rogue apps are written by Google, how do they help Google's business model?
Tracking information is a revenue stream. Revenue pays for content development. Content sells apps. Google profits off app sales.
Therefore, Google has a disincentive to do anything about the transparent (read: user doesn't know it's happening) third party collection of tracking information. Particularly given the noted disinclination of Android users to purchase apps, relative to their iOS peers.
That said, the last known location feature seems like a special concern. Right now "my phone is off" is a cure for location requests from an authority, even if it carries the possibility of later action. This change creates a system where last location is available regardless, and a clearly-intentional settings change is required to alter that.
I don't know how much of this to lay on Google, since "don't build tools authority figures can misuse" would have prevented fire. But I do think there's a common failure to consider use cases like minors with authoritative parents, when it's very possible to build tools that are at least less easily misused in that situation.
I'm not criticizing your post, just noting that all of your points are about Location Services and not the Trusted Contacts App.
Trusted Contacts just hooks into Location Services to allow the user to explicitly share already captured information with 3rd parties.
Location Services is used by tons of other apps and if you dumb it down or turn it off those apps will stop working or beg you to turn on the most granular of it's settings.
Here are some of the ways that Location Services is used:
- Google Wallet will see you're at XYZ Retail store and pop up a notification with your rewards card barcode on it.
- Google Maps will see you're at the trendy new restaurant and ask you to snap a couple photos and review the place.
- Google Now or Maps (not entirely sure which) will tell you if your commute home is going to suck or not and alert you to accidents on the road ahead.
- Google Rewards will ask you randomly/creepily "have you been to ABC and if so when?" and give you a pittance for your data.
- If someone has access to your Google Account, they can easily activate the find my phone feature and see exactly where you are without your knowledge.
Regardless of whether or not you have any of these Apps installed, if Location Services is on then it is silently tracking your location. You can see everything it tracks on your timeline (https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)
When your phone is located using the "Find my phone" feature, it pops up a notification on the phone (this phone has been located). Of course, if they had physical access to your phone in the past, they may have blocked this notification, but it is provided by Google Play Services, so that requires to block a wide range of notifications (eg. all "app update available" notifications iirc).
On the other hand, they may access your location history, if you enabled that, and see where you went in the (possibly very recent) past without any notification.
1. Yes people will always raise concerns but if this saves lives and makes people safer then we should embrace it and be happy about it. 2. Yes and Android is more open in general than Apple 3. If I Richart Ruddie am leaving Baltimore City to head back to Baltimore County/Owings Mills and I want my parents to know that I am safe then I would be glad to have a seamless feature like this no? Social pressure = safety? 4. There definitely needs to be a level of control to turn the features on and off. 5. Interesting thoughts on the monetization aspect but its more about safety here you would rather have your child monetized and save their life then to not monetize or at least I hope so.
Any app that lets us check on our kids' whereabouts quickly and effectively without taking them out of the zone (Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??) is a blessing IMO.
An app like this would be restricted just between my wife and I, and our two boys. No more than that. No more is needed. We are an 'absolute trust' group and quite frankly, the idea that any of us would want to hide our locations from each other is simply not even a thing.
The truth for me; If I had listened to my parents, I would not be as cool. But If I had listened, I would be healthier and getting older - I realize health is happiness.
If my parents had received a push notification the moment I left school, my teenage years would have been utterly miserable, instead of just mostly miserable.
To be honest, I hope my kids do the same when they're that age. I'd absolutely yell at them if I found out because that's how it's supposed to be (and that's how they get better at not being caught), but deep inside I'll be glad they did. It's part of growing up.
That being said, I understand why Americans and their car-centric, gun heavy cities wouldn't agree with this, except maybe in a city like NYC. Which is why I won't be raising my kids in the US. I expect the public infrastructure of where I live to guarantee my kid's safety, and not to have to rely on helicopter parenting to give me peace of mind.
Incidentally you can just leave your phone at home, or turn it off.
My first thought was "leave it in your locker". Though there are separate security concerns with that.
Also, now days a teenager without a phone, might as well be at home.
Knowing your kids location isn't something you always need, but when you do, you need it badly. Anything can happen in a 'large, safe city' - such as being run over. Parents knowing where you are when you don't turn up at home at the agreed time is OK with me.
My other question is: are you a parent yet? When you become a parent, your brain gets rewired, you start worrying about things you never worried about before.
Ahhh here's the thing though, in such a case you don't really need their location right that second. There's nothing you can do. They will be taken to a hospital and will be taken care of. Of course you would love to be there for you children the second they are in pain, just like when they fell on their face when they just started walking, but you don't need to. As a parent you have to accept that from when your kids get into their teenage years they will start to become independent, they will have experiences (good or bad) without you and they will be just fine. Or they won't be fine. But you certainly couldn't have prevented them getting run over, getting robbed, abducted or raped by having constant access to their location.
>you start worrying about things you never worried about before.
And you always will worry, trust me. Even when your kids turn 30, you still worry. You have to try to look at this objectively instead of with your feelings, people start being independent and there's nothing you can do about it. You will have to learn to let them go. What's next, do you want body function trackers installed so you can check their heart rate to see if they're still alive or their glucose level to see if they have already had their lunch yet?
My point to GP here is this: growing into adulthood is a give and take in both directions. You have to give your newly emerging mini-adults enough space to fail, recover, adapt, and learn - and yes, potentially get injured too, as horrible as that mere chance might seem.
If you don't do this, you're interfering with their chance to learn resiliency and self-reliance.
And anecdotally, they'll maybe be less likely to willingly stick around as adults and allow you to indulge your parental worries, once in a while.
Uh I think your reward function is broken.
Why punish them if they're being safe and doing something you actually want them to do? Why not communicate with them to figure out the rationalization behind the rule and enforce the right thing?
I'm afraid I don't really understand why inconsistent logic means knowing your kids location is bad.
I did wander and skatboard in a lot of locations that were closed off, or we were not supposed to be, which isn't something your parents would usually want. Doing that I made a lot of great connections with people I wouldn't have met in my otherwise pretty sheltered life.
I think it's more important that such a system could easily destroy a lot of good experiences for the children and less important that it prevents bad ones (which can also be valuable experiences).
I don't think my parents ever took note of it, but if they would have known, where I was I guess they would have been a lot more strict about it. And that would be understandable, because who wants to get a call from the police?
So no, nothing "bad" would have happened, just a bit of hassle.
From the article: "And if your trusted contacts are really worried about you, they can request to see your location. If everything’s fine, you can deny the request. But if you’re unable to respond within a reasonable timeframe, your location is shared automatically and your loved ones can determine the best way to help you out."
From a later example on that page this "reasonable timeframe" seems to be 5 minutes.
Would that work on all kids? I doubt it. But we can't project our own experiences onto other parents and kids. It can seem bizarre to those that grew up with a rebellious streak or controlling parents but it's possible to have really good and trusting relationships with your parents.
I think I have a pretty good trust relationship with my kids, but there have been times where they have been half an hour late home from school or a gig etc. and the worry button gets hit. In all occurrences, it has been simple things like missing a bus, or staying back to get help with teachers etc., but those are the sorts of things that I'd like to be able to check on quickly before resorting to calling/texting.
The ability to notice something is amiss, then do a quick spot check to see "Oh, its OK, he is still on school grounds" or "He's on the number 10 bus homeward bound" is reassuring.
EDIT: I just realised that I forgot to answer your actual question re: Are my kids OK with it (the monitoring).
Neither of them have pushed back much on this. In fact, last year I developed a small iPhone app purely for the family to use to achieve the sort of tracking this Google system does. My sons were actually quite helpful in helping me design and test it out. End of the day I abandoned the app because I just didn't have enough time to maintain it, and there were other third party apps coming out that did the same thing.
As mentioned above, we have a pretty good trust relationship with our kids. Its not as if we track their every movement, and we are quite flexible with them spending a lot of time out with their friends and other sporting/social activities. It is just on those outlying times where we feel the situation is not completely 100% rosy that we like the ability to do a quick 'ping' check.
It definitely does seem potentially kinda creepy or weird initially, but if you do truly trust each other, it's actually really useful. e.g. You can passively see where someone is before nagging them to ask if they're going to get here soon, etc.
You can also configure the phone to send out its location just before its battery dies.
If they are 18 and paying for their own service, then fine, that's another story.
But until then, I don't think it even matters. Seriously, I feel people without children just don't understand how parent's feel.
Honestly, I don't think it really matters if your citizens are OK with it or not. They are still citizens and you are responsible for them.
If they are politicians and have a say in the service, then fine, that's another story.
But until then, I don't think it even matters. Seriously, I feel people just don't understand how the government feels.
If you don't put children in situations to experiment and earn your trust, they will never learn.
And yes parents worry, that's normal. If you lose sleep over your kid being out having fun with friends, it's perfectly ok. It's feature of raising kids, not a bug.
The disconnect here for me is that your hypothetical is hardly a new phenomena unique to our time. What would you have done in the 50s? 80s? 90s?
Let's put things in perspective here. The very fact that you can have real time updates on the metrics off the /device/ that is expected to be carried with your son means you have a direct channel of communication to your son's device. Worried? Give him a call. Problem solved.
"Giving him a call" is all fine, except if they are mid set or are tearing down while another band plays - stages can be loud places, and not the best things for talking on a phone, or even texting when they are busy moving gear. A quick check to see "Oh, he is still at the venue" or "He appears to be at the band's storage lockup right now" is enough for me to know that it is pretty much ops normal.
Why? I always see such massive push back to technology in what would theoretically be a tech-adopting crowd.
Why would i, as a band playing Son, want to have to stop practicing or playing a set to call my family back in a timely manner? Couldn't some technology, perhaps a device in my pocket, allow my parents to know where i am, handle the burden?
Why is my mother knowing where i am such an invasion of privacy? Mind you, i'm 30 now, but i don't care if my wife knows where i am 24/7. Hell, i want her to. I'd also like to know where she is. We've got nothing to hide from eachother, so why should the 1950s method of calling eachother periodically to ping our locations be used? Why is 1950s your metric for success here?
I want technology to make my life less of a hassle. By all means, make it secure, i'm not arguing anything different. But i'd like to move beyond 1950 please.
As a kid, I always meant to but often forgot.
Fwiw, most of the time in hs my parents knew more or less where I was but not specifically what I was doing. That seems reasonable to me.
Parents will worry when they don't know where their kids are - and it's normal to worry. Despite (inspite?) of our paranoid tendencies, IMO parents have a right to know where their kids are.
Maybe you attach an authentic identity to YOUR phone.
Maybe some multinational corporation has insight into all of YOUR habits.
With luck, I've substantially limited the attack surface of my information, not by trusting the oh-so-helpful, feel-good, animated, haptic touch-screen toggles sprinkled here and there, but rather by NOT implicitly trusting any of the devices released in the past ten years to do anything my way, ever. Even when rooted.
don't kids have a right to not let their parents know? If I decide as a teenager to go and have sex with my boyfriend, shouldn't I be free to keep that from my parents? What if my parents disapprove of him, cause he's from a "bad part of town"?
Parents worry, and that is normal, and they should teach kids how to make it manageable (i.e. ping via SMS, "call me when the show is over" or whatever), but 24/7 control is a different thing.
Quite frankly: no. As a kid, you aren't mature enough or developed enough to be trusted to make reasonable decisions. That is why you have a guardian and that is why you get some leeway in court. It is also why you tend to not be allowed to consent to many things.
You can keep your banging your boyfriend from your parents (but they probably know. Kids aren't that smart. ESPECIALLY when crotches are involved), but they should, if they wish, know where you are. Because they are responsible for you and are responsible for dealing with your screw-ups. If that means humping in a car or at a friend's place while their parents are out of town: Welcome to being a teenager.
Being a kid is about screwing up. A LOT. Being a parent is about being the safety net for those screw-ups. And that involves being able to find your dumbass kid when they do what kids do.
As for abuse: The parents who want to know where you are 24/7 already can. Just install an app to do it or use Find my iPhone/Android. If anything, this is less invasive as the child can decline to share location and just call to say "I'm alright".
If kids don't screw up because they are under constant control, what would give you assurance they will not once that constant control gets turned off?
Also I don't honestly understand: what threats are you actually protecting your kids from by having them under constant location surveillance? Do you guys fear your kids are at constant risk of being kidnapped every time they go out?
I used to worry that my little brother would have some accident while driving drunk or stoned, I worry about friends and relatives being molested or physically assaulted, but knowing where they are would hardly give me any solace.
Again, if anything, this gives MORE leeway. My sister pings her kid's location. They have five minutes to approve or decline and call her. That handles the problem of kids who don't realize that obnoxious ringtone is theirs.
And the google page on this already gave the use case. Someone goes somewhere (in this case, hiking) and later misses an appointment. You ping them and get an idea of where they were and can act from there.
Going back to the My Sister example: The kid doesn't respond and she gets a location. It is her kid's friend Jane's place. My sister is now relieved because she trusts her kid and Jane to not get into too much trouble (outside of MAYBE needing a Plan B pill...). Or she gets the location and it is the intersection of Drug Street and Rape Alley. My sister is now pissed and kind of terrified and actively calls the kid while looking for her car keys to go deal with this. Or the kid declines, calls her, and says "Hey mom. I'm fine. Oh, that loud car and gunfire in the background? We are totally playing Call of Duty. I'll talk to you later". At this point, depending on the parent, they decide how to act. I know from experience that my sister would probably IM her husband or me and start complaining and we would try to calm her down and remind her that her kid isn't a complete dumbass and knows they can count on her. Whereas I know our mother would be insisting on picking us up from wherever we may be.
But again, this strawman of the abusive parent is just a load of bull hockey. They already have ways to be abusive parents.
And I don't expect anyone to be checking the phone every 5 seconds, either, the _possibility_ of checking it at any time is what conditions my behaviour.
As a kid that means not hanging out with Billy the Pothead. As an adult that may be something (more) illegal. Learn early.
Once you are 18 and able to financially support yourself, then you are independent.
If you disagree, I invite to ask any law officer if it's ok to punch little kids in the face and steal their food.
Or what if your parents disapprove of him because you're male too.
The phones are already tied to your Apple/Google account, they already know everything about you. You have already trusted them with this information.
Many don't.
The issue at hand was people actually USING a particular Google service... If you don't, then what are we arguing about?
> Many don't.
A few sure, but many?
The only change that comes with this tool is that through it you can also share this information with a third party that you appoint (and with a seemingly reasonable protocol: third party requests your location, you get 5 minutes to decline the request. no action on your part -> location is sent under the assumption that you have a problem and can't react).
Of course you worry, you're a parent. But is it your kids' burden so they have to be tracked 24/7?
That fears are completely normal. Been able to track your kids not so much. Please, think twice before using a technology that you don't know which long term psychological effects can have on your children.
> Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??)
When I was a child I could lie to my parents on where I was. I didn't dit it, but I have a choice. That's part of growing up. You will steal away that responsibility from them. Maybe it is not a problem, but you don't know.
It is extremely tempting to use this technologies, maybe kids right activists should lobby for laws that forbid them.
There are plenty of gay kids who need to hide their location from their homophobic parents.
Some parents are intensely homo/transphobic, and do not have their children's best interests at heart. It's not always about "trust".
I'm a little wary of Google implementing this feature, but alas, all i really care about is that my wife and i can see each other. Especially since she takes the bus quite frequently. Likewise she often has no idea where i am in my commute, and i don't like to text her while driving.
I understand peoples concerns, but i think they need to take a step back for a second and look at the UX. The UX/Value prop is clearly there - some of us want to see where others are (assuming it's consensual of course), and that is a very valuable feature. So with that said, what needs to be done to settle the HN concerns i wonder?
The feature is useful, and highly desired for some of us. I'd love for my wife to be able to find me 24/7. Beyond that, i have no qualms about what needs to be done to quell HN concerns - just find a way to get me my feature.
1. Make it hard/impossible to be forever telling your location to someone (it's unclear if that's what the feel unsafe mode does in the first place, or if it just broadcasts it once)
2. Make it easy to 'enter an alternate location' to tell the inquirer
When user consent can be subverted, otherwise benign opt-in features that are deployed and marketed ubiquitously can have unforeseen consequences.
That said there is a utilitarian way to look at this, that for more situations it helps parents to keep their kids safe. The ethical question is far from cut and dry.
As much as we would like, technology will not solve trust issues in any relationship.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/12/goog...
I trust my trusted contacts -- let me share my location all the time. (No, some backwater tab in the G+ app does not count.)
Least the G+ feature can be set as a widget.
Whoa there! Were the contacts also Googlers??
This is just the same as the Location tab in Google+ (which used to be a separate app, Latitude) - it's only contacts who have chosen to share their location, but integrated into Maps.
When I've discussed, generally people steer towards the creepy side of being tracked and dont like it. Maybe this version finds a middle ground as it's selling it as 'keeping you safe' while giving Google the right to track your location to sell better targeted ads. Really, the latter is what this is all about.
It's very useful, but why put it in g+ and only in the mobile version of g+!
All that data is stored. They know all your contacts, how you write, what your interests are, where you go every day. What if suddenly the country your in makes it illegal to do X, or feel Z. They decide to arrest everyone who meets the criteria, and there's nothing you can do.
Although, you are correct now, it is ads. But the risk is SO great I really don't understand not taking precautions
I'm a bit nonchalant, I suspect because I work in marketing and see this as trying to get more relevant ads to me. And I'm always interested when ads show up to see what triggered said ad where obvious.
For the potential for abuse, it is a concern. I feel the key is we have a choice on a service like this. And what seems a slightly strange opinion, I am more OK with companies collecting this type of information but would be disturbed if I knew the government was generally accessing it without court order.
Really if your that worried about big brother you should not be carrying around a mobile phone at all. Governments already have ways to track location and activate mics in the background, so in that way its nothing new, now we also have the information.
So, in a way, this app is protecting you against an abusive government.
Note that for those who have Location History turned on, this isn't adding anything.
The Trusted Contacts app allows you to grant people permission to ask for your location or for you to push those people your location if you feel the need. If someone asks your location who is permitted, it prompts you to approve or deny the location request and then times-out and grants it after a few minutes. The whole ask for permission to ask for your location seems awkward at best.
This grant/timeout thing completely defeats the reason why my wife and I use the G+ location sharing which is to avoid the "where are you? when will you be home?" interaction.
> If you can't find a friend and become worried about their safety, Messenger could one day let you send a request to see their location. A timer would begin on the friend's phone that gives them a chance to approve or deny the request. If the timer expires on its own, their location would be sent to you automatically.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-reviewed-cool...
This is for people who live in unsafe areas and have trusted family member than they do want to watch over.
This is an app that should have been released in India immediately after Nirbhaya incident. For a Company thats supposed to move fast, Google definitely blew timing of launching such a feature.
As a parent, I find this tremendously useful. This is specially important for people in certain countries where walking/driving home at night is realistically dangerous.
Waiting 10 minutes for a GPS update doesn't seem to actually increase safety in any noticeable way.
I haven't downloaded the app myself. However, I was under the impression the 'virtual walk' was some separate feature that when turned on, allows the person to monitor your whereabouts in near real-time. (like could watch a tiny dot moving on a map as you walk).
One update every 10 minutes is way too infrequent. I feel like the majority of walks people could use this with would take less than 10 minutes ...
I'm seeing in the comments that the level of trust in companies is higher than the trust in your government.
Both very sad things.
[0] With the Electoral College, you don't even need a majority of the popular vote.
What's direct about that? Companies are directly accountable to their shareholders, accountable to the general population via the government, and very indirectly accountable to their customers.
Maybe that's occasionally deserved.
I'm probably more paranoid about surveillance than you are. I wrote positively about this app anyway.
The average commenter here is, more than likely, like me, not really in the target demographic for this app. I'm male, reasonably strong, and capable of defending myself. I don't worry when I leave the house.
Sometimes my female friend, who is passionate about bicycling, tells me about her experiences on the nearby bike trail. Where, every day, she passes by dozens of loitering homeless individuals. Where, some time ago, a woman was dragged off her bike and had her face shattered. Where multiple women have been kidnapped. She expresses fear, but loves her sport enough to overcome it.
She rides on a multi-thousand dollar custom-made road bike that's surely appealing for someone desperate enough.
Who am I to tell her that her fears are overwrought? My physical safety isn't at stake.
For people like her, I think this app is worth consideration. For people like me, I never wanted it.
She's dragged off the trail. Her husband notices and notifies the police.
She halts during a physical confrontation. Her friend calls to check up on her, and calls the police when she can't be reached.
She crashes and becomes incapacitated. Someone checks her location after she fails to meet up.
In reality, sports enthusiasts already use expensive tools for this. But the point of my comment wasn't about my affluent friend. It was about similar disadvantaged people facing actual dangers.
Nerds complaining about privacy, while the only threat they face is increased cholesterol levels, just seems so trite.
Awareness is good. Zealotry isn't.
How would he notice unless he was actively watching? And what constitutes “off” the trail, anyway? If she strays off the trail for whatever reason, would she have to remember that her husband (or anyone else) might be watching and call the police to intrude on what might be a situation not amenable to improvement by armed personnel?
> She halts during a physical confrontation. Her friend calls to check up on her, and calls the police when she can't be reached.
How would the police help after a confrontation already has taken place? How fast is the police, really?
> She crashes and becomes incapacitated. Someone checks her location after she fails to meet up.
All right, in this case it would actually help. But this does not mean that she should have this capability turned on all the time, 24/7; only while she is doing a physically dangerous activity. Like going hiking – it’s normal to leave word of your planned route, in case of emergency. But not all the time.
Your “nerds” comment is insulting and demeaning.
Nearby here, recently, a woman was ambushed and taken off into the woods, and has since vanished.
Supposing hypothetically that her hypothetical tracking beacon was emitting several hundred meters off into the unexplored woods, maybe someone would have noticed. Hypothetically. Sorry.
It's uncommon for bicyclers to go off course. Bikes don't navigate well through trees. And no one wants to leave their valuable possession behind.
And I was being terse before. Normally there would be some attempted contact beforehand.
> How would the police help after a confrontation already has taken place? How fast is the police, really?
In a kidnapping or injury scenario, time is of importance. Alerting the authorities (or anyone nearby, really) can save a life. If first responders wait additional hours because they were alerted too late, that person may die.
People who travel tell people when they expect to return. If they leave on a three-hour trip, and experience catastrophe thirty minutes in, it may be 2.5 to 5+ hours before someone makes an emergency call.
> All right, in this case it would actually help. But this does not mean that she should have this capability turned on all the time, 24/7; only while she is doing a physically dangerous activity. Like going hiking – it’s normal to leave word of your planned route, in case of emergency. But not all the time.
Sure. I never suggested around-the-clock monitoring.
She -- and her bicycling friends -- have been carrying tracking equipment for years. They plot their courses and compete on sprint times.
So they are totally used to surveillance. It took me by surprise that so many HNers found the concept anathema.
> Your “nerds” comment is insulting and demeaning.
I guess. It was mostly tongue-in-cheek. I'm one of them.
Sorry for the poor language. It was unwarranted.
Google is already tracking your location all the time if you're in the market for this product. This just exposes that data for what seems like a very useful user feature.
I've lately been getting into the habit of turning location services off unless I actually need them on, and I would recommend it. It's a shame my phone gets my location behind my back without any indication by default.
(This all without you ever telling which location is your work and which is home.)
"To help you through your day, Google needs to: Use and store your location for traffic alerts, directions, and more. User your synced calendars, Gmail, Chrome, and Google data for reminders and other suggestions."
This topic does come up a lot here, and yet this is as direct and concise a way to put it as I can imagine. I wonder what those who have been surprised by the services they have opted into would suggest to improve their understanding of what they are potentially agreeing to?
And this is a general problem - people share all kinds of private information about themselves, without full understanding of the kind of analysis that is possible on that data these days.
I personally don't have a problem with the tech (and I've used Latitude way back, so it's not like any of it is new).
And if you're worried about being tracked in general, then mobile phone. That's the sad truth.
I'm sure GCHQ can track me, but hopefully Google only gets minimal location data.
Install the app, start beacon, send anonymous and platform independent link, done.
Optionally customize location technology (gps/network/passive) and beacon interval (from the default GPS/1 second).
No registration, no contacts, nothing else.
You choose when you're sharing your location and with whom.
Partially inspired by the old Google Latitude.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emilburzo....
The truth is, if you trusted your kids, you wouldn't need the ability to obtain their exact location without having to ask for it. Parents who trust their kids will already know where their kids are supposed to be, or will just ask them.
On the other hand, I see no problem with the feature that allows you to request location and will automatically send location after a long non-response.
Of course, most kids (beyond a certain age) are going to occasionally go places their parents aren't comfortable with. This is a normal part of growing up and it shouldn't be impossible IMO. Even in particularly bad or dangerous cases, I would feel this calls for a normal punishment (maybe?). No TV, chores, etc. Not constant location tracking.
They don't need to specifically spell out that use case with parent/child characters.
It seems obvious to me that this will enable parents (all kinds, good and bad) to track their kids with a pretty scary level of control.
But you're right in that this isn't just restricted to parents and children. In my post just substitute parent/child with a controlling boyfriend/girlfriend.
It used to be that certain truths were only know between two people, but now for many, it will be those two people, and Google.
Even if it were any other company, the totality of awareness a single organization has, from childhood on up should give us some pause.
Microphones, accelerometers, cameras, GPS, and now annotated depth of relationship, instead of presumed depth inferred from ancillary metrics.
At this point it's getting a little strange.
With software and services these days, there's almost nothing people won't consume. It's as if people will eat everything in a package labeled as food, even if most of the contents are inedible.
More and more, it feels like people know they're eating fish hooks, but maybe they'll pass the foreign objects they've swallowed, before any fisherman tries to tug the line and set the hook.
But even if you or I don't buy in, when everybody else does, the outliers still get hooked and still lands in the boat, just by implicit association and proximity.
The stakes are raised ever higher with each beat of this game. It's like the quote from Apocalypse Now:
Ah, man... The bullshit piled up so
fast in Viet Nam, you needed wings
to stay above it.I very often wish for something similar, for instance when my mother is running a bit late in a park. I don't want to mess with her jogging or walk. But I'd like to be sure she's still fine.
Thing is, except for the current generation, smartphones are often silenced and forgotten in some pocket. So unless it's an invasive constant-on tracker .. it wouldn't work in my case.
I've got an android phone but my wife has an iPhone, does that mean this is useless for us?
Edit, it's in the works:
If you're an iOS user, click here to get notified when the iOS app is available
Owntracks hasn't been too bad for this; there are clients for iOS and Android and the the backend is self-hosted.
The only problem I've encountered with it is that the Android client has shown some instability from time to time, with high battery drain or missed location updates.
Thanks but no thanks.
Be a science, engineering, and technology company, Goddammit!
Can someone brave please put their foot down and say enough? Someone?
And, it's even so much worse because they make it seem like they're such good guys by releasing these 'free' or 'cheap' services. It's just outright deceptive.
Meaning - yes, clearly it helps companies sell their products and services. But, as an individual consumer, how many times over the past year have you purchased something because its advertisement informed you of something that you truly needed but didn't know about?
That's not the same thing as 'help'.
This is the problem here. I find myself infuriated and helpless talking to my friends (non tech) about not trusting Google or any provider for that matter with their entire digital life. They look as if I'm the non sensible one. They must be thinking "Why is he being an idiot by saying no to free stuff?"
It is scary to think that one company knows (1) What you search for, (2) What videos you watched in the past, (3) Where all you have been (Google Maps), (4) What you like to read (Google News), (5) Who are your friends, what things you buy, what are your personal conversations about, Which flights you check-in to, What other subscriptions you have, and much more (Gmail).
Too much power can be easily derived when this data is put together. For example, they can easily profile a person's political leanings based on these.
It is even worse that they are in the advertisement business that tries to create a bubble for yourself and keep feeding you digital information based on what you already like, and not an unbiased view of the world.
For example, if I read about Republican party once, and had one email from Republican campaign, then I start to see Republican Ads all over my digital life. Of course, that influences my view of the political world. It is like being imprisoned by one's own past.
Hopefully, things will change, and people will realize that there is no free lunch before it is too late.
Would be great if we wouldn't have to assign the "trusted" status to Google(or any other 3rd party) too in order to use the app.
The cynic in me thinks this whole use case is intended to normalize the idea of a company always knowing everywhere you go. See? Privacy is unsafe!
This doesn't really make sense. Google already has this information. They're sharing what they already had access to with contacts you select. On the other hand, there was an interesting feature a few years ago, where you could share your location with friends without special requests. Since then it has been moved from a separate google service to google+.
What I'm saying is - this is nothing new. It's actually a new, restricted version of what's been available and happening for a long time.
Also, this likely allows them to track kids whereabouts, bypassing COPPA via implied consent.
Basically tell them to wait inside while I share my location. Then have it alert them when I'm nearby so they can come out.
This would be really helpful for the airport situation, as I wouldn't even need to park.
blog.google
And the "Don't be Evil" slogan has never been removed. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
> This new personal safety app lets you share your location with loved ones in everyday situations and when emergencies arise — even if your phone is offline or you can’t get to it.
My money is going to be on "not very long".
OK Google, we got the whole point of this app.
Nevertheless, it's a useful feature and can help many.
Your location will be auto shared in 4min 59seconds.
Loud Music Notification Not Audible
Son is in Strip Club. Thank you.
- you are encouraged to use your phone even more, because doing so signals to your loved ones that you're ok. Using your phone pretty much means sharing even more data with google, watching their ads and buying stuff from their app store
It's a pure win. For google.
This may be a thing that is specific to local conditions, though. It so happens that I live in upper Snoqualmie River valley, which has trailheads for many of the best and most popular hiking trails in the area. So, naturally, this is where most of my hikes are. And the towers that provide signal for the towns in the valley are on the surrounding mountaintops, so they provide coverage for a good chunk of wilderness around, as well.
Just kidding. I like the idea.
I know advertising is a trillion dollar industry. But, you'd think that Google, of all companies, would be the ones to create real innovation and value without falling to the lowest common denominator.
"con people into letting Google track them" - how does this enable any _more_ tracking than existed yesterday? The only thing I see it enables is to share the data that already exists about the user with the people that user appoints (and trusts, hopefully).
Disclosure: Google employee, but nothing to do with location services.
It may seem a rehash (and, it partially is). But, there are readers who are either unaware or have forgotten that Google doesn't give away services for free. Google is an advertisement and tracking company, not a benevolent technology supplier.
The Google collective is obviously way smarter than any of us. So, who really knows how they plan to profit from this service. My guess: It gives them further reach beyond Android devices. It requires people who may otherwise quickly turn off location services to keep it on. And, it allows them to bypass COPPA via implied parental consent.
Look, I've worked in this industry. And, tracking devices (AKA people) is massively profitable. And, the profit increases exponentially. That is, the profit per signal increases as the number of signals and devices grows. Furthermore, at the highest levels of coverage density, it becomes possible to even make accurate conclusions from the empty spaces (i.e. people without devices).
Yeah because that has totally been a problem I've been needing a solution for.
A young woman was abducted recently on a local trail. I don't believe she's been found yet. Perhaps this would have made some difference.
This just seems like a way for busybody and manipulative people to stir up drama.
Anyone who has ever expected an at-risk person to make contact at an estimated time can relate how worrying it is when that person is delayed.
1. Police can, but won't until they consider it a missing person scenario, which oftdn involves considerable delay, at least for an adult -- and that's even if the police happen to prioritize that case.
2. For many people in various places for a variety of reasons, even aside from delay issues, the police aren't the first people they'd want to rely on. Or even on that list at all.
> This just seems like a way for busybody and manipulative people to stir up drama
There is some risk of that, but there's also empowerment of people to create their own effective support networks of real, personal trust.
I just suspect that your solution to the smaller problem will make something that's a much larger problem (as in, more than an order of magnitude larger) worse.
This product is a much better version of that system. It's impervious to me forgetting to send the text and gives an accurate location rather than "somewhere in the general area served by this trailhead".
Then again, I'm in Europe, so crime rates are virtually zero, and the only risk is spraining an ankle or something.
I'm also paranoid, so I carry a Cospas-Sarsat PLB as well. But you need to be conscious, and have at least one arm working, to activate that.
Hikes can still be dangerous, especially in the mountains. Hereabouts, pretty much every year several people get seriously injured on one of the trails, usually by tripping and falling down the slope; and in most years, there's at least one fatality.
Usually it's because people veer off the trail or do something similarly dangerous, but sometimes it's just dangerous conditions (e.g. ice) on regular, well-maintained trails that are normally safe, or just bad luck. Better safe than sorry.
His parents were at the finish line waiting and, apparently out of shame, he did not tell them, nor did he answer any calls. So, the organizers sent out an emergency search and rescue team. It was not for another two and a half hours that they realized that the competitor was sitting at home and choosing not to answer his phone.
And this:
>But if you’re unable to respond within a reasonable timeframe, your location is shared automatically and your loved ones can determine the best way to help you out.
This does not seem like consent.I can think of at least a 100 situations where I was not near my phone and yet do not want to send my location.
Moreover how is this different from messaging someone/calling someone to ask them where they are? The only time I am trying to reach a person and cannot reach them is when they are out of coverage range.At that time, no app would make a difference.
This is nice when its a part of other apps (Whatsapp,Uber etc) .On its own, location based information as being the only purpose can prove to be quite disastrous.
Edit 1: People seem to miss the intricacies of human relationships here.I'd like to see folks tell their parents/loved ones/other close beings how they do not want to add "trusted contacts" and share their location continuously.
Then don't install the app, man.
Sounds like the consent is explicit at the time of configuration. As long as it's a separate app an opt-in, I don't think this is bad.
More creepy is when it becomes a part of Android itself and someone can add themselves as "Trusted" either via physical access or an exploit. It's a stalker's dream.
I would just say, "hell no!", and leave it at that. If they are close to me, they will understand. In fact, they'd understand enough to not even ask.