Location sharing- I think I’m worryingly in the minority

[PomPomHead]

I am seriously worried that I’m in the minority here and the world’s gone mad. Why would you share your location All The Time with every member of your family ( even, as in the case of my friends, with your
married 30 year old daughter!)? Why does nobody feel able to be independent and unwatched ? It baffles me and nobody has been able to persuade me of the so-called safety benefits?
Is checking your location now the new showing me you love me?

I think the level of CCTV and ring doorbells there are is a concern. There is no doubt that we are all being watched almost all the time.

Ring doorbells and people not bothering to keep their perimeter where it should be is a major problem.

Our old neighbours were very surprised when they approached DH to tell him they were installing one and the best place to put it also covered most of our front garden that he wasn't happy with that.

We'd taken the time to position and set up ours so that it very strictly only covered our space and they were genuinely surprised we expected them to do the same.

We share as a family. I’d imagine my dc will stop sharing with us once they’ve moved out. It’s not controlling. I barely look and neither do they but it can be very helpful and also a good safety net too.

Why would you want your in laws to even have the option of knowing your personal business like this? Do you want them to know if your going to the doctor’s, visiting a friend or your family, heading off on a girls’ holiday?

You and others of this mindset are sleepwalking into a world where you will have zero privacy.

We don't, never had.
We are in the minority compared to our youngest ones parents.

I think alot is about the sort of people you share with.

My in laws and dh are not the sort of people to check what i am doing all the time so i trust it not to be misused. We orginally set it up for tracking cars on a long distance journey and just never turned it off.

I still have privacy. They have no idea if I'm at the doctors or the tesco express next door. Its never that accurate to the inch. They have no idea what im actually doing at any of the places I am at. They just know where my phone is which if i didnt want them to know where i was I'd turn it off or leave my phone at home.

I do it with my teenage children - as in I know where they are.

Well, the older one I’ve said I’ll take it off if she wants but she’s said she’s happy to have it for safety as long as I don’t look at it all the time 😁

I wouldn’t like to have it with anyone as an adult though - especially not my parents - they’d love to be emeshed in my life and my Mum would be watching it all the time!

You're not describing anything close to privacy. It's actually concerning that you think you are. Boundaries chipped away without you noticing.

You think that’s privacy?

You have to make amendments to your actions to stop them knowing your whereabouts?

Why on earth do your ILs ever need to know your location?

Privacy for and from what though? My phone is tracking where I am already and sending the data somewhere, why would I care that my DH (who already always knows where I am) can see it?

I’m not doing anything dodgy, or lying about my whereabouts, why do I need privacy from my close family members?

I don’t agree with tracking older teenagers at all. I wonder how many of these tracked older children would face questions if they suddenly decided to turn it off or they wanted to leave the ‘circle’. They know it is going to invite questions, so I don’t always think it’s a free choice.

Tracking children who are at Uni is just invasive. Are they going to get questioned if they have stayed out somewhere for the night? Even if you don’t question them, the fact that their parents know is bad enough. I want my older children to be independant and I value their privacy. I worry a lot when they go out for the night, but tracking them isn’t the answer.

Why does it need to be privacy for or from anything in particular? Privacy can just be for privacy sake. Autonomy is important.

I've never had it. My teenager's gone on hols without me to foreign country 3 times and still not had location sharing or life360 or whatever. I realise this makes me a bad person.

I guess I just find it a bit strange, like the people who get their tin foil hats on about Alexa listening to your conversations or whatever.

If I don't worry about my privacy walking around Tesco where we’re all being watched from 3 different angles at all times or driving past all the hundreds of cameras in the car- I don’t see why I’d worry about privacy specifically from my family.

I assume you’re not living in a commune, therefore clearly privacy is important to you. You don’t live in a single room dwelling? Privacy matters to you.

You genuinely feel that privacy from your husband isn’t something that’s a good thing to have? That basically you don’t exist as a separate, independent entity from him?

Digital privacy is a whole other can of worms. But it doesn't mean I'm fine with handing over all of my privacy. Alexa isn't a real person I share my bed with (or his parents). It just isn't the same. Google doesn't care on a personal level how I spend my day, my husband obviously does.

Absolutely no chance
i would have HATED this as a teenager myself. Teenagers are meant to be spreading their wings, and in my teenage experience that involves probably doing some stuff you don’t want your parents to know about
my ex husband tracked me in my car without my knowledge, made me physically sick finding out

I trust DH2, he trusts me, so we don’t have to know everything about what the other is doing

if other people want to do it that’s their prerogative, I don’t feel weird because it is alien to me

If a tree falls in the woods with nobody around does it make a noise? If you share your location but nobody is watching are you being tracked?

DP and I share, and 99.99% of the time neither of us look. But we often travel across the country for work, and have unreliable work finish times. It lets you answer the question, Have you left yet and when should I put dinner on so it's hot on the table when you get home.

We don't sit at home watching each others every move. Most people have unbelievably boring and mundane lives most of the time and it would be totally tedious to watch their track continually, I think those that think people would be watching them 24/7 if they shared have a vastly inflated opinion of their own importance...

No way. I was horrified quite recently when I realised my mum had accidentally left it on after we had met up in a slightly nebulous location (and she lives 250 miles away from me so why would I need to know she's anywhere really). My tweens don't have phones and won't get anything with connectivity until they are 16.

As a teen I used to horseride miles and miles and no one knew where I was. Why the hell do you need the mental clutter of knowing where everyone else is? No wonder everyone's so bloody anxious all the time.

You can use a Garmin, or at a push something like a track24 which sends out a signal when you trigger it if you do a high risk sport.

That’s actually a very interesting perspective. Me and DH are pretty inseparable even though we’ve been together a long time so I can’t actually imagine him not knowing what I do with my day.

Even though he can check my location he already knows where I am and what I’m doing if we’re not together (because I’ll have told him) and it goes both ways. Don’t get me wrong he doesn’t care, if I said I was off to a strip club he’d probably ask if I wanted cash withdrawing, but it’s nice to have that security- I can find my person and he can find me.

Obviously don’t answer if it’s outing or uncomfortable in any way but what wouldn’t you want your husband to see? Is it just your general location or say if you want to tell a white lie and say nip for a wine after work.

I think after reading this thread, as much as I fall down on the side of never wanting to share location, that if people are happy to share with each other then that’s their business.

It’s more the arguments used that I object to. To me, they’re not logical. The ‘I have nothing to hide’ one gets me because how much of your privacy are you willing to give away, to anyone at all (including the govt) under this argument? And the one about “it’s difference nowadays” meaning that it’s more dangerous on the streets than it was 30/40 years ago also isn’t true. Criminals, particularly those targeting children, are mainly roaming around online…

Oh god people use it on kids AT UNI? Jesus wept. The point is you are supposed to be able to get up to stuff and be independent for the first time. What are you going to do if your kid is in, say, Newcastle and you're in Swindon? Pre approve their nightclub choice?

Blimey. World's gone mad etc etc.

But that's exactly my point. There's nothing in particular I don't want my DH to see. I'm not hiding anything. I'm not sneaking around. He just doesn't need to know what I do every day. Because it is my life. And vice versa. I'm not interested in being able to know what he does all day because it's intrusive. I don't think it's healthy to live in each other's pockets so much. We chit chat about our days, so we do still know most of what the other has been up to of course. People should be able to have some secret if they wish to, however innocuous they may be.
I'm not an anxious person and I don't do dangerous things, so I don't feel like I need to protected from anything 24/7 either. If i ever felt like that, a lifestyle change and some therapy would be the solution, not being tracked.

Sorry for jumping on a reply from someone else. I don’t get this though, for example my DH knows my phone password but wouldn’t snoop. There’s no lock on the bathroom door but he wouldn’t walk in on me. He shares my location, but doesn’t watch me unless it’s for a good reason. Doesn’t mean I don’t have my privacy

I worry about it becoming a normalised thing because it's an absolute gift to an abusive partner. But also a way for someone who's overly anxious and obsessive to worry themselves in an unhealthy way.

Fine as an occasional thing when you are meeting people, like if my Dad's driving across the country to meet me then he'll share WhatsApp tracking so I can see if he's delayed when he can't text, or if I'm wandering around town with, but separate from, friends. But I'd hate it as a default on. I'm an independent adult.

But who decides on a 'good reason'? These forums are crawling with posts about controlling and abusive partners, friends and relatives.