Google’s new “Trusted Contacts” app lets you keep tabs on family

[Arty]

It's like find my friend on ios, expect it will be cross platform and web app.

 

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/googles-new-trusted-contacts-app-lets-you-keep-tabs-on-family/?comments=1

 

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Today Google launched a "personal safety app" for Android called "Trusted Contacts." The new app offers another location-sharing service from the company, one that Google envisions for use in emergency situations.

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After installing the app, you can flag some of your contacts as "trusted." Then you'll be able to send your location to a trusted contact or ask for their location. The whole app is built around the "emergency" use case, complete with a dead man's switch for location requests. When someone asks for your location, you'll get a full screen pop up allowing you to approve or deny the request. You only have five minutes to do this, though—after five minutes, your location will be shared automatically. The idea is that if you're unable to use your phone, your trusted contacts will still be able to find you.

 

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For Google, a lot of this functionality already existed in Google Latitude, a contact location app that has been built into Google Maps for several years. After the all-consuming Google+ came out, Latitude was killed in favor of a location solution baked into the social network called "Google+ Location Sharing." Now with Google+ being deemphasized across the company, it makes sense to put location back into a standalone app.

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his new app isn't quite a replacement for Google+ Location, though, since there's no "always-on" location sharing mode. You can only see someone's location when they share it with you, with a maximum of 24 hours per location-sharing session. Google says the app is great for having someone "virtually walk you home if you feel unsafe," but it doesn't quite seem aimed at everyday logistics like "when will you be home for dinner?"

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The app works using a Google Account, and using Trusted Contacts means you'll also have to have Google Location History turned on. If a phone is offline, this feature lets people see your "last known location" according to Google, but, like with Google Maps, it also means you're sending your location data to Google all the time.

I think this is great, and I plan on using it just for the shear convince of it. 

nobody in my family is ocd stalker crazy, so their shouldn't be any problems. 

[suicidalfranco]

just like find my friend, it's freaky 

[tlink]

CToS alpha is launching guys.

how convenient! i can see where every member of my family is for the low low price of selling as much information as they can gather from the sensors in my phone!

[VerticalDiscussions]

Family stalkers..... Slenderman repears.... Going nuts overhere

[2FA]

Nice title...

[GoodBytes]

Moved out of Tech News as this thread title is not allowed and the whole article was copied and pasted (this is called plagiarism)