iOS 13’s Forced “Find My” Notifications
Interesting: in Find My in iOS 13, the subject of a notification is told you set up a notification.
In Find My Friends in the iOS 12 era, you could quietly notify yourself about a friend without them knowing.
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So for example, I know my wife is returning home shortly, and I want to finish up what I’m working on before she arrives. I could notify myself when she leaves her current location.
I can see why they thought this was a good idea, but I don’t think it solves the problem very well. The person being tracked has already consented and can revoke the permission whenever they want. They can also already see in the app when they are being tracked. Some sort of notification may make sense to remind people who have forgotten that they enabled this feature years ago. But a notification for every single use is really annoying. Many people use this feature to avoid bothering the person.
You can control whether Find My notifications are shown in Notification Center, but it doesn’t really help. If I turn off notifications to avoid being bothered when my wife is tracking me, it also means I won’t get notifications when she’s on her way home.
If your worry is that someone will gain access to your phone and start tracking you without your knowledge, that person would likely turn off the notifications, leaving you none the wiser. And, of course, they could still track you simply by leaving the Find My app open, without using the geofence feature. So how is this really improving privacy?
I noticed this last week. I’m sure it’s considered a privacy/consent issue, but you’d think consent had already been given when they allowed you to follow them.
Nick:
This will be annoying for my wife, I set notifications for when she get to a certain location for dinner prep on my end. She says this will end up pissing her off if she can’t turn these off for me.
Yeah, I used this all the time in 12 to know when my kids were on the way with my ex so I could be ready. Don’t use it anymore because it’s not important enough to send a notification!
I use this a lot with my wife to facilitate family coordination. Despite this new hint, she says she doesn’t get a notification if I set one up about her leaving a place or something. Works as it did in iOS 12. We’re both on 13.
This basically kills the feature for me. I’ll just try to remember to check the app frequently. Nobody I know will use notifications anymore either.
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@Lukas
Yeah, there is an oddity to this feature that the change might actually be positive.
Yeah, basically I think this feature is a move against abusive spouses. Reminds me of this piece on the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html
I was searching about this topic and came across this page.
I totally agree with you on this.
The new Find My in iOS 13 basically made me an annoying stalker.
My wife is a busy person, works long hours and have overtime a lot.
I am a disabled person and my job is part time and is relatively short.
So I am responsible for picking up our daughter and preparing for dinner.
Before iOS 13, I could set up a notification like:
"Notify me when my wife leaves work so that I can go pick up our daughter and start preparing for dinner"
This has been very helpful and worked perfectly.
But since iOS 13 when they added the notification (I knew it would alert my wife but I just kept using it) my wife started to get annoyed and would argue with me, and said "Do you have too much free time to stalk me?"
It did indeed hurt my feeling a lot.
She was probably busy when I set up those alerts.
I didn't intend to bombard her with notifications but now it basically turned me into a creepy stalker.
I could imagine my wife getting angry.
She was probably at her last hour or so at work, the busiest time, and then her phone pops up messages saying "your husband is stalking you when you leave"
I would be mad too if I were in her situation.
It makes me look so stupid too.
So since then I stopped using notifications and manually check her status. once in a while.
This has to be one of the most useless and stupid feature Apple has made recently.
My wife has given out permission to see her location.
Why does she have to be spammed by these notifications?
It's not even a privacy issue.
I agree!
I switched to using the LIFE 360 app. This app was overkill on the features for me. I tested LIFE 360 with my wife got months to see how it worked. It worked 👍 great. BUT, LIFE360, based on I read had parents feuding with the kids! Most people (me included) don’t want to have their driving tracked. BUT, I am not interested in tracking my family driving patterns.
I told her the IOS FOLLOW MY APP, didn’t have any reoccurrence alerts. If I use that app i need to set up a new alert every time they got to work or school. For some reasons I can set up a REOCCURRING alert that goes to my family member that I’m setting up the alert for. I can setup a 1 time or repeating alert. BUT the reoccurring alert relates only to me. My family member would get an alert when I ARRIVE SOMEWHERE. This is ONCE OR REPEATING.
Like previous posts said it is worthless to me. I hardly ever looked at the app before, let alone where everyone was.
LIFE360 seems hated by parents and kids in posts.
Any APPS TO TRACK WITH ALERTS?
Thank you!
Totally agree!
I basically stopped using Find My since iOS 13 because I don’t want my wife and daughter think that I am a creepy stalker.
My wife once told me “don’t you have better things to do thank checking on me?” Whereas like many of you I was just trying to get prepared when they she has left her location.
Consent has been made when we set up Find My. The person shouldn’t be annoyed every time it is used.
I think we should create a petition to urge Apple to roll back to the iOS 12 way.
I couldn’t agree more! This is bull shit! My husband doesn’t even want people to call him only me, because he is busy and doesn’t want to be bothered. If I text him to much he gets Pissed off.
Getting notifications every time I want to know when he is on his way home would get him very angry! Apple finely screwed up on this one or at least they need to give users ability to TURN IT OFF!
>you’d think consent had already been given when they allowed you to follow them.
Relationships end, and sometimes they end badly. It's good to have a reminder that this feature exists, and is enabled.
Maybe this notification doesn't need to be sent every time, but on the other hand, some of these comments read to me a little bit like "I was doing something slightly creepy, and now people will see when I'm doing it, so I'm not doing it anymore," which sounds to me like it's perhaps a positive outcome overall.