Find My Friends
Find My Friends is an iOS application that allows for location sharing via GPS for users that have Apple devices. Apple launched the application in October of 2011. This application can be used on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac devices. Users choose when to and for how long to share their location with others. Users can also request the location of another user. The ease of location sharing through this app comes with ethical controversy surrounding the ability to track others on a map.
Contents
Features
In order to share or receive a location, both parties must have the Find My Friends application [1] installed on their devices. If the device is using iOS 9 or later, the application is automatically installed. If the device is using iOS 8 or earlier, the application can be installed for free from the App Store.
Sharing a Location
A user’s location can be shared via phone number, iCloud account, or AirDrop. A user can elect to share their location via the Find My Friends application, the Contacts application, or in the info tab of an iMessage conversation. There are three options for how long the location with be shared: for one hour, until end of day, or indefinitely. If either of the first two options are selected, the location will be removed from the recipient’s Find My Friends application after the time has expired.
Requesting a location
After sharing their location with someone, a user can request their location from within the Find My Friends application. Once a request has been sent, it is up to the recipient to accept the request. If they accept, they can elect how long they wish to share their location by selecting from the three options noted in the previous section.
Viewing a Location
A user can view someone’s location either within the application or in the info tab of an iMessage conversation. In both cases, the sharer’s contact icon will be displayed on a map and the name of their location will be displayed. This name will either be a City, State or the name of their location such as a university or a sports stadium.
Naming a Locations
User’s have the option of customizing the name of their location. Once physically at a location, look inside the user profile on the application to choose a label for this location. Find My Friends provides default label options such as “Home” or “Work” but also allows users to create custom labels. Only one label per location can be selected, but labels can be added to as many locations as the user chooses.
Stop Sharing a Location
Find My Friends allows users to stop sharing their location with a specific user at any time they wish, even if it is before the expiration time. Similar to sharing a location, this can be done from the Find My Friends application, the Contacts application, or in the info tab of an iMessage conversation. The user will get a notification that this user’s location is no longer being shared with them.
The application also offers the ability to have a user’s location hidden temporarily from all of the people the user in question is currently location sharing with. In the application, inside the user profile, there is the option to turn off “Share My Location”. This option can be toggled on and off as much as desired and others will not receive a notification that the user has turned their location off. If they try to look at this user’s location, their icon will not appear on the map and their location will be noted as “Location Not Available”.
“Location Not Available” is also displayed in the case that a user’s device does not have an internet/cellular connection or if the device has been turned off. In this case, the location will return to being displayed once the device is turned back on and/or finds an internet/wireless connection.
Location Notifications
Find My Friends has the capability of sending notifications to follower of a user’s choosing. These notifications can result from when the user leaves or arrives at specified location. User’s also have the capability of sending one of their followers an immediate notification to alert them of their current location. User’s can also get notifications on the movement of the people they are following when they leave or arrive at specified locations.
Link to Apple Maps
When viewing a user’s location within the application, the geographical distance (in miles or kilometers) that user is from the other user’s current location. The application offers connectivity with Apple Maps to aid in navigation to this user’s location.
Ethical concerns
Privacy
Find My Friends combats some of the ethical concerns on privacy with the explicit acceptance/denial of a location request and it’s associated expiration time. While a user can restrict who they are sharing their location with, Find My Friends is not capable of restricting how their followers are using their location. These followers have the ability to stalk a user’s real time movement for the amount of time they have their location. A follower also has the ability to share a user’s location with people that have not been explicitly accepted by the initial sharer either through screenshots or extracting the exact address from the map feature.
Deception
Privacy concerns have given rise to third-party applications intended to increase the privacy surrounding one’s current location. After jailbreaking their iOS device, a user can install tweaks such as such as LocationFaker and FMFNotifier[2]. LocationFaker is a tweak that allows user to change their location so when other application such as Find My Friends request this location, it will be displayed as this falsified location as opposed to their actual location. The user’s followers have now way of knowing if the location they are seeing has been altered by LocationFaker.
FMFNotifier is a tweak that notifies a user of any time their location is requested from an application such as Find My Friends. This means that whenever a follower clicks on a user’s profile within the Find My Friends application, the user will get a notification without the follower being aware that the user is getting such a notification.
