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‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing

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  • Routinely seen this cause drama between people with poor communication.

    Nosy friend with it? Get ready for I'm coming by or what are you doing there texts.

    know some people who use it to pick up drunk friends just in case. For emergencies. Do they use it like her? Noooooooopeeeee

    Most people lack the maturity for this. It skeeves me the fuck out.

    Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I'm turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.

    A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it's a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it's still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person's feelings by turning it off 🙄

    I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂

  • It's only vile when you project insecurities or bad intent...

    We both know each other's passwords for everything. We use a shared database for it. We both know each other's phone, unlock codes and often through laziness will just use each other's phones for shit. We shared the same bank accounts, we don't have separate money. We share the same vehicles....etc

    What's mine is hers, what's hers is mine. Except literally.

    We also both have each other's location. What do we use this for? Essentially nothing except when one of us is traveling, or someone is feeling neurotic/worried. The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.

    We don't hide things from each other, we've explicitly built a relationship of openness and trust, brought on by us actually_not_ trusting each other for a long time. We are completely transparent, and you know what this has helped build? Trust. Know what it has torn down? Insecurities. It's been great.

    Would recommend.

    I'm exactly the same. I get that it's not for everyone. I understand that, and respect it. But I hate people framing this as you having a trust issue.

    It's the opposite of a trust issue. I trust my wife to be responsible with my bank accounts. I trust my wife to see my location because I also trust my wife to only bother checking if she has a reasonable reason to do so, and to not be a weird paranoid freak if I'm somewhere she doesn't expect. I trust my wife with the password to all my online accounts because it's easier to just share a Bitwarden than it is to segregate everything, and I completely trust her to not invade my privacy.

    The thing is, our lives are online. If I get hit by a bus or something, I don't want her to have to deal with my death while ALSO figuring out how to convince banks and insurance companies and whatnot to let her in. Much easier to just share my Bitwarden with her.

    I'm not in some panopticon, worrying "Oh no, what will my wife think about me being within 500 yards of an ex's house" or whatever because I totally trust her to trust me. It's just not an issue.

  • Been sharing with select friends and family for years now, zero issues. And if we did have an issue? I'm turning it off for you 🤷♂️ pretty simple. Frequently extremely convenient.

    A friend of a friend of mine is sharing with a friend of theirs. And it's a crap show like you said, coming over, inviting themselves to events, why were you there, etc. Everything you said. And it's still a problem, to the point where they leave their phone at home if they are doing anything sensitive, because they are afraid of hurting the person's feelings by turning it off 🙄

    I think the key is having a backbone, and also not having crap friends 🤷♂

    Oh 1000%

    Id tell someone to fuck off so quick.

    Some people are enablers for those kinds of friends. Others have no problem with it. Ex and family all shared. They'd all be in each other's shit and were a ok with it. Was so odd to see being the polar opposite.

  • The peace of mind knowing that your significant other didn't just die in a car crash part way to their destination and are still making progress is significant.

    Bless you but the moment I start being afraid of my partner dying everytime they leave the house will be the moment I'm getting back in touch with my psychologist.

    Never went to work in a snowstorm? Or heavy rain?

    I'm not OP, but my wife and I share locations, it's endlessly convenient for coordinating. Never abused.

  • I can’t believe the number of people in here with paranoia and shitty relationships that can’t communicate with their “partner”

    My wife only asked me to 'follow' her with location sharing because there was a creepy dude in the area who was approaching women. Otherwise we trust each other enough and actually communicate about the things we do. Plus we don't cheat on each other - there's enough stress in life without adding to it lol.

  • Vile.

    I trust my wife, and she trusts me. We trust each other not to ask for stupid brain-poisoning shit that humans weren't meant to have access to that could one day blow up horribly.

    I don't have her passwords, she doesn't have mine. Our phones are locked. I could technically see what she's doing online I suppose via traffic snooping in the router logs but the day I feel the urge to do something like that is the day I kill myself for having abandoned basic moral principles.

    We're apes, we have brains built for avoiding snakes in tall grass and finding water and berries. You poison yourself with surveillance, you feed your worst and most destructive impulses. Practice keeping secrets, practice being okay with not knowing. Trust isn't surveillance, trust is knowing that if something fucking mattered you'd be told.

    edit: I want my wife to be able to break my heart because if she does she'll have a good reason for doing so. That is what trust is.

    I don’t have her passwords, she doesn’t have mine.

    Having the means for each spouse to get the others passwords can be pretty essential when dealing with critical emergencies and death. It's good to have some way for someone you trust to get your online accounts when you pass away so that everything can be concluded and canceled and sentimental content preservation and all that.

    For my relationship the means to gain access to my password manager are available in the case of an emergency. Maybe shove the credentials in a bank security box and put access to it into your will if you don't feel you can trust your partner with the knowledge while you are alive.

  • As a fairly privacy conscious person, I also expect and accept that it's happening too. I don't think you can be privacy conscious and not accept that. You have to be ignorant to think you can hide it all. I do my best to keep as much data out of their hands as possible though. I don't agree with it.

    When I say I don't accept, I don't mean I live in denial, I mean I don't acquiesce - I resist it, whether that be by avoiding services/products, paying for premium, installing ad blockers or modding things to remove telemetry.

    I am aware that my phone company knows where I am and I'm on cameras, but I'm not going to make it easy for the next Cambridge Analytica.

  • After 30 years of marriage, my wife floated the idea of turning this on. I looked at her like she had two heads.

    Why would anyone be willfully surveilled? You know its not just your partner that has access to that data when you have location services enabled.

    Found Hank Hill's neighbor, Dale.

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    To me it's weird that people have issues with this. My wife and I, married 35 years, share each other's locations because if something bad happened we would want to be able to find each other. I don't even give a second thought to, "...and I can make sure she isn't cheating on me."

  • I have my location shared with my wife because while I was working out of the house I got tired of answering the same text message ("how far from home are you so I can start dinner?") every afternoon. She's the only one in the world I have no secrets from, so I just never turned it off. I honestly don't know if she still knows I've got it shared with her.

    To me it's weird that people have issues with this. My wife and I, married 35 years, share each other's locations because if something bad happened we would want to be able to find each other. I don't even give a second thought to, "...and I can make sure she isn't cheating on me."

  • at that point that difference would not matter to me

    Got it. Seems like you’re applying your preference to the original commenters situation; that’s where I was getting confused.

    I'm not sure I understand you, but my point is that I strictly don't want my location history to be known by such a company. if it somehow still happened, I wouldn't care if only that company or anyone from the public would know, because those who really want to know can get access anyway.

    another way to put it: I don't care that my neighbor can have a look at it, because I know they don't care at all, and have better things to do. but in my opinion, if someone cares to check it any time, there's a high chance that their intentions are not good or neutral. of course differences like family, maybe coworkers in very soecial jobs, but otherwise.

  • Me and my partner share locations. Never once have we done this. It's purely a logistical thing. 10x faster to check someone's location when you're supposed to meet them instead of testing them "wya".

    Yeah, exactly. So great to be able to say, oh, she's about 15 minutes away, so I'll start making dinner. Much easier and safer than texting while driving, too.

    We originally set it up so she could make sure I wasn't laying in a ditch somewhere from a cycling crash.

  • I'm not sure I understand you, but my point is that I strictly don't want my location history to be known by such a company. if it somehow still happened, I wouldn't care if only that company or anyone from the public would know, because those who really want to know can get access anyway.

    another way to put it: I don't care that my neighbor can have a look at it, because I know they don't care at all, and have better things to do. but in my opinion, if someone cares to check it any time, there's a high chance that their intentions are not good or neutral. of course differences like family, maybe coworkers in very soecial jobs, but otherwise.

    The original commenter explained they and their spouse share their location.

    You said it was a breach of trust and privacy.

    My question was “How? My situation is similar to the person you’re replying to and I’m curious how two consenting adults sharing their location with each other is ‘a major breach of privacy, for both parties, and also of trust’.”

    I understand now that you didn’t mean that it was a breach of trust and privacy literally, obviously they’ve both opted in, but you used that to express your own preference.

  • Same. For this to be a problem, you must first have other problems.

    How old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don't see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they're being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.

    I've never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I've never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don't share location. I don't even keep my location activated for my own use unless I'm actively navigating somewhere new.

    We've got plenty of "normal" problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems

  • If you can't trust your spouse without location, tracking, find another spouse.

    No they need therapy not another spouse. They shouldn't have a spouse at all until they've fixed their own insecurities.

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    To share my location with my partner I need to share it with a third part also and I'm pretty selective about that so I never even signed up for this kind of thing.

    I use location services but just leave them off until I need them. I'm not super hard to find anyways

  • All they would have to do is turn location sharing off, and change passwords. More likely they would talk about it and agree to split rather than just run off. You know, like adults.

    You are obviously not a woman.

  • How old are you guys, if you don't mind me asking? It seems that generally younger people don't see this as an innate violation of privacy, where older people feel quite surveilled and even like they're being viewed as untrustworthy for someone to ask this of them.

    I've never cheated on my spouse (not even close), I've never felt any inclination to lie about my whereabouts. I can see the safety aspect of this, logically. I would feel offended if my spouse asked me to be a dot on his phone, as if he was asking to own me. We share a home, a child, a bank account, a car, but we don't share location. I don't even keep my location activated for my own use unless I'm actively navigating somewhere new.

    We've got plenty of "normal" problems, but none of them lead me to want his location. I simply trust him enough. It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems

    I simply trust him enough

    but what people are saying is it has little to do with trust: it’s a utility… in fact, the trust is flipped: i trust my partner to have my location, and only look at it for things like checking how far away i am for my benefit

    It feels to me like if you need your partners location on tap, you must first have other problems

    you’re allowed to feel that, but that’s absolutely not true. given the safety and utility aspect, it FEELS to me like if you don’t trust your partner to have and not abuse your location data then you must have other problems

  • because you are not sharing your location with each other. you are sharing your location with a greedy company that also lets your significant other, and then the highest bidder access this information. they are doing whatever they please with it to make (even more) money.
    see, I was so into google's timeline feature years ago. but soon after I realized privacy is a thing I was disgusted of it and turned it off. if you run nextcloud and that addon I don't remember, or reitti, at home and use that, and you keep is somewhat safe*, then it's fine, and I could imagine using that, even just for myself.

    I should have explained that. for some reason I tend to assume that lemmy users are privacy conscious, but that's probably not true.

    * don't expose the services because your data will get stolen and you'll get hacked by automated systems. run a VPN on the server, only expose the port of that. then you can access the services through a VPN. wireguard is relatively simple, and it's secure.

    You can self host location sharing. I do it with Nextcloud. Home assistant can do it too.

  • My wife only asked me to 'follow' her with location sharing because there was a creepy dude in the area who was approaching women. Otherwise we trust each other enough and actually communicate about the things we do. Plus we don't cheat on each other - there's enough stress in life without adding to it lol.

    Fun fact, location sharing is literally a form of communication. Super convenient. This thread is filled with people in shitty relationships. Yikes.

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    They also bundle twice as much crapware
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    Yeah i suppose any form of payment that you have to keep secret for some reason is a reason to use crypto, though I struggle to imagine needing that if you're not doing something dodgy imagine you’re a YouTuber and want to accept donations: that will force you to give out your name to them, which they could use to get your address and phone number. There’s always someone that hates you, and I rather not have them knowing my personal info Wat. Crypto is not good at solving that, it's in fact much much worse than traditional payment methods. There's a reason scammers always want to be paid in crypto if you’re the seller then it’s a lot better. With the traditional banking system, with enough knowledge you can cheat both sides: stolen cards, abusive chargebacks, bank accounts in other countries under fake name/fake ID… Crypto simplifies scamming when the seller, and pretty much makes it impossible for buyers What specifically are you boycotting? Card payments, international tranfers, national transfers taking days to complete, money being seizable at all times many banks lose money on them Their plans are basically all focused on the card you get. Pretty sure they make money with it, else many wouldn’t offer cash back (selling infos and getting a fee from card payments?) if you think the people that benefit from you using crypto (crypto exchange owners and billionaires that own crypto etc.) are less evil than goverment regulated banks, you're deluded. Banks are evil anyways, does it really change anything? The difference is that it technically helps everyone using crypto, not only the rich. Plus P2P exchanges are a thing You'll spend more money using crypto for that, not less That’s just factually false. Do you know the price of a swift transfer? Now compare it to crypto tx fees, with many being under $0.01
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    lupusblackfur@lemmy.worldL
    Oh, Google... Just eviler and eviler every day. Not only robbing creators of any monetization via clicking on links but now just blatantly stealing their content for an even more efficient theft model. FFS. I can't fucking wait to complete my de-googling project and get you the absolute fuck completely out of my life. I've developed a hatred for Google that actually rivals my hatred for Apple. ‍️
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    reverendender@sh.itjust.worksR
    I read the article. This is what the “debate” is: Experts: This is objectively horrible, and does not replace human interaction, and is probably harmful. Meta: This is awesome and therapeutic. Now give us monies!
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    https://archive.org/details/swgrap
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    I’m in the EU and PII definitely IS “a thing” here, Then let me be more clear: It is not a thing in EU law. With due respect, the level of intellectual functioning, in this case reading comprehension, you display is incompatible with being an IT professional in any country. If you are not trolling, then you should consult a physician.