February 2024, 11 p.m. Manon’s Uber driver drops her off at the door of her building. The student hurries to the porch when she suddenly thinks she recognizes a familiar silhouette.
A little shaken, she bids farewell to her unwanted friend and locks herself in her study. “It took me a while to realize that he had found my location through Uber.” In fact, for three years, Manon got into the habit of sharing her ride with her friends through Uber’s real-time location sharing feature. The VTC application allows its users to select up to 5 people with whom it is possible to share the geolocation of the trip.
Except here it is. “When I separated from my boyfriend, I forgot to delete him from my contacts with whom I share my path,” recalls the 24-year-old student. Thus, the young man received a link by SMS to follow the student’s trip and went directly to her home.
A perverse effect
Manon is not the only one who shares her location with her loved ones to calm herself during her nightly trips. This is the case of almost eight out of ten women in Europe, according to the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, which warned of this feeling of insecurity in 2021.
To deal with potential dangers, they develop strategies. And the first methods implemented usually refer to geolocation applications.
“Find my iPhone”, share location on Uber, Support functionality on the iPhone to notify your loved ones when you arrive at your destination, and even the Snapchat map that shows the real-time location of its users… In recent years, companies have deployed endless functions to share location of its users. The goal is always the same: to reassure Internet users and their loved ones, especially when they arrive home late at night.
However, these geolocation tools raise questions about the abuses they can cause. And, instead of protecting and reassuring users, sometimes the opposite happens. Last year, Airtags, Apple’s little gadget to avoid losing your items, were diverted from their initial use. No larger than a two euro coin, they had been used in particular to follow and harass young women without their knowledge or consent.
Aside from Airtags, the problem is Snapchat’s geolocation feature. In fact, the social network shows the real-time location of its users on a map, even once the application is closed. This allows anyone to very accurately find the position of a loved one. That’s how Clara found herself face to face, one afternoon, with one of her old acquaintances.
“I felt spied on”
If the incident was not dangerous, the young man “just sat” with Clara, the hairdresser admits to having been “a little scared.”
Solene* also had a bad experience with Map on Snapchat. At the end of last year, one of her former teammates told her that he had fallen in love with her. She doesn’t share his feelings and decides to leave it there. “But this year, looking at the map on Snapchat, I noticed that he was often in the same city as me.”
“If I went down to Toulon one weekend, two days later, he was also in town. When I returned to work in Paris, I saw it located in the same place.” However, the young man does not live in either city. He is originally from Brest.
If Solene initially believes it to be a coincidence, these situations multiply. The Snapchat map places him at the same airport as Solene*, in different cities in France, and even at his school. “When I returned to school in September I saw him located in the same establishment as me and I found out that he had registered here.” It’s too much for the young woman.
Now, you only share your location through the app with a select few friends.
intrusive parents
The other danger is that geolocation features are installed or used without the person having given consent to share their location.
This is what happened to Jeanne*, 25 years old. The student realized, somewhat by chance, that her father was geolocating her during a dinner three years ago. “I was at a meal with family friends when a friend asked me, ‘Did you know that your father geolocated you?'” he says. “And then I fell off the chair without realizing it!”
Confronting him, she discovers that her father is using Google Maps to find out where Jeanne*, her brothers and sisters, and her mother have gone. In fact, the young woman one day logged in with her Google account on her father’s phone, who now has access to all her personal information. Google Maps actually has a functionality allowing her to share her position in real time with her loved ones that Jeanne*’s father was able to activate directly through the young woman’s account.
The family then asked him to delete the Gmail accounts from his phone. “It had no impact on my daily life,” Jeanne* admits. “But it scared me a little.”
Avoidance strategies
Sometimes the desire to protect children, or those close to them, can become excessive. Nadia, 56, paid the cost. For several months, the mother shared her location with her ex-husband through the “Find My iPhone” application.
An abusive control, therefore, that pushes certain users, like Romeo, to adopt evasion strategies. His mother installed an app on his phone when he was 13 years old. “She was worried about me when I came home from college alone,” says the high school student, who will turn 18 in a few months. “And at the time I understood. But now she wants me to keep the app after I leave. But it makes me uncomfortable that she could harass me. I wish I had my privacy.” Explanations that struck his mother’s eyes.
Romeo plans to buy a second phone to prevent his mother from tracking him. “I would only keep the one with the geolocation application to go to class or do the shopping,” he says. The device will remain in the apartment as soon as the young man leaves for the night.
*name has been changed
Source: BFM TV
