So we might as well embrace location sharing and reap the benefits. There is a multitude of ways for third parties to find out where we are, including cell towers, the metadata transmitted from telecommunications, and data logged on our phones. Yet security experts agree that on smartphones, it is now practically impossible to stop location tracking.

Even worse, location tracking raises numerous privacy concerns about who can snoop into your whereabouts.

Yet all the popular location-sharing tools are limited or flawed, and in some cases broadcasting your location may not be worth the effort or worth draining your phone’s battery life. Such is the state of location sharing on smartphones.įor years, tech companies have offered different ways for people to tell one another where they are. When she opened Google Maps, she could see precisely where I was on the 101 South freeway.īut when she refreshed the map to follow the ambulance, she ran into the app’s shortcomings: Google showed I was at Costco (not where I wanted to be, injured or not) when I was actually strapped onto a stretcher heading toward San Francisco General Hospital. So before calling the police, I texted my partner, who was already tracking my location with several apps, letting her know I was hurt. SAN FRANCISCO - Last week after my motorcycle malfunctioned and crashed on the freeway, I wanted only two simple things from technology: to call 911 and to tell loved ones where I could be found.Ĭoincidentally, I had been testing location-sharing tools from Apple, Google, Facebook and Snapchat.

Google maps my location