Worried.. Have my children’s phones been hacjed?

[Noideawhatusername]

Sorry.. I know this is not AIBU but am very worried so have put this here for traffic. Our children are preteens and have mobile phones, we use Family Link and Life 360 to keep them safe etc. In recent weeks, we have noticed the locations are marked nowhere near our home (in fact many, many miles away) on both Apps. Does it mean their phones have been hacked by the person living at that address? We also keep getting notifications that the children had left the house etc in the night when they were asleep in bed. Also, a few days ago, my son could not sign into one of his game accounts because somebody else was using it. What can we do please? We are not very good with technology. Thank you very much in advance.

Have you tried changing all their passwords?

It sounds more likely that the apps have glitched.

I would delete the apps, resume factory settings, change all passwords etc (you should do this every three months or so, anyway), then reinstall the apps.

The statistical liklihood of your kids' phones having been hacked is extremely low, but this should help with functionality.

What game account could he not log into? Change all of the passwords, if they are android phones change the passwords on the linked Google accounts.

Thank you all for your help so far. The children have Androids and the game was Brawl Stars. Both Apps Life 360 and Family Link say they are at an address in Croydon (we live many many miles away). That gave me the unease feeling.

We just googled the address in Croydon. It is a residential address and linked to some IT consultancy businesses. Sounds very suspicious. Who / where should I report this?

@Noideawhatusername

We just googled the address in Croydon. It is a residential address and linked to some IT consultancy businesses. Sounds very suspicious. Who / where should I report this?

There is nowhere to "report" this. Just change all passwords. Check haveibeenpwned.com/

If your phone isn't using WiFi, it could be calculating location from triangulation from cell towers. If one has a poor signal, it can put your location a long distance away. At work the cell tower with the best signal is 15km away, so if I map my location it puts me in a completely different town. You say it often happens at night. Have you controlled access to WiFi at night, and therefore it's using mobile signals?

Children always use the WIFI at home abs their phones are locked in the night. My son has deleted all his games from his phone and changed his password, this seems to have solved it. But my daughter’s is still showing Croydon address. They are both using WIFI at home at the moment.

That is such a shame.

There would be very little benefit to someone "hacking" your children's phones - they are children, so their data isn't worth much. Also, anyone who went to the effort of hacking their phones would be very likely to mask their location, as they'd be pretty easy to find! It's likely to be a coincidence that the address they show at is an IT business, honestly.

If you use the official Google locator, does it show your home or the Croydon location? www.google.com/android/find?u=0

Hopefully this is part of the issue. I just feel their location at some IT consultancy firm seemed quite a coincidence. I hope I am overreacting.

I quite often get messages that DS is 'in England'. Which narrows it down a bit