hey parents: there is literally no non-abusive reason a person would want the ability to read someone’s emails, track their location, and go through their calls and text messages without their knowledge or consent.
I want to address the person who tagged this “what if they’re missing??”
that’s it, that’s the answer.
what this does is allow you to set up a list of people who are able to request your location. when they do so, you have five minutes to either refuse or grant the request. if you don’t respond within five minutes, the request is automatically accepted, in case you’re hurt or otherwise unable to get to your phone. your trusted contacts can also see how recently you used your device.
in other words: if someone genuinely wants to know if you’re okay, they can check the app and see that you’ve used your phone five minutes ago, and that can be the end of it. if they want to be doubly sure, or it says you haven’t used your phone recently, they can request your location. if you want them to know where you are, or you can’t answer, they’ll have your exact location within five minutes. if you don’t want them to know where you are, you click deny, and they still see that you got the request and responded to it, meaning, again, they know you’re okay. this is safety with accountability: you can’t track someone’s location without their consent unless they fail to respond to the notification, and you can’t do it without them knowing about it.
if you want to track a friend or loved one for genuine safety reasons, set this up. it gives you all the access you need if your concern is actually for the other person’s well-being, rather than a desire for control. (it’s not out for iOS yet, but Google says that’s coming soon).
(also: don’t be the jackass that makes a rule that someone has to accept all your location requests because that makes you just as bad as the people who install tracking shit covertly.)
It’s not abusive in any way for a parent to want to know where their underage child is and who they’re talking to, and saying so is a foul misuse of the term “abuse”.
anyway like I said there is literally no non-abusive reason a person would want the ability to read someone’s emails, track their location, and go through their calls and text messages without their knowledge or consent
I’m glad you live in a world where adults don’t groom kids on the net, or by calling them or sending them text messages.
I live in this world:
a world where parents are an order of magnitude more dangerous to children than “adults grooming them on the internet”, and giving parents unchecked powers of surveillance is for that reason alone more likely to put kids at risk than to keep them safe.
I live in this world:
a world where the psychologically debilitating effects of surveillance are well-established and well-known, yet adults do everything in their power to invade young people’s privacy and then ask dumbass questions like “why are kids so anxious?” and come up with answers like “it’s probably because of selfies”
I live in this world:
a world where invasion of privacy is recognized as an integral part of emotional abuse, but parents still get away with it because “they’re just doing it to keep them safe uwu~”, despite the fact that this is the same line the goddamn NSA gives us and most of us don’t take that sack of lies from them.
tldr, I live in a world where you’re not just wrong, you’re promoting attitudes that are actively harmful and you need to sit down, shut up, and listen when people are trying to educate you about issues of justice and safety.
Someone send this to my mom lol.
Interesting.
My mother and younger sister (11-years-old) hacked into my social media account and read all of my conversations with trusted friends where I revealed pent up thoughts, frustrations, etc. They confronted me and the ensuing fall-out was so traumatizing I contemplated suicide for weeks. Now, I don’t trust anyone anymore, my paranoia has increased, and my relationship with my family has been strained ever since. Don’t fucking do it.