Nowadays, various legitimate tracking apps are being used to track your close friends, see where your child is hanging out, or when your mother is arriving back from the grocery store. These are all extremely useful tools and maybe even replacements for sending a text to see where your dearest people are at that moment of time. However, is this a normal thing to do or is there also a negative side to this extremely handy tool?
Source: www.vox.com
Abusive use of the tool
Checking the location of your friends can seem like an innocent act, however I have the feeling that people tend to use this to stalk their friends. If someone is using the app just to look at the location, just to look, I think there is a dark side to it. This may seem like a small and innocent act, but it can get out of hand. There are more and more cases where these “handy” apps are used for the wrong purpose. In New York City, there was a recent incident where an abusive boyfriend disagreed with where her friend was going. To counteract this, he constantly monitored her through the app to pop up everywhere to harass her (Dell and Levy, 2021). This clearly shows that these apps are leveraged too easy for people with a dark mind.
Dark publicity
Not only the side of the abusers is in the wrong, also the application developers are. Recent scholars find out that the spyware is used in intimate violence against their partner, and the developers knew this. Above that, it is also noted that the data tracking apps also report more than just tracking the location, but also record texts and videos of the users. Moreover, the app developer even try to market the apps as such by using slogans as “Myspy” and “spying on your friends phone (Valentino, 2018).
These tracking location apps are promoted in the wrong way and are used in a dark way. Therefore, I think this should change? However, which party is taking the blame and should we stop using these apps all at once?
Dell, N. and Levy, K., 2021. How domestic abusers use smartphones to spy on their partners. [online] Vox. Available at: <https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/5/21/17374434/intimate-partner-violence-spyware-domestic-abusers-apple-google> [Accessed 7 October 2021].
Valentino, J., 2018. Hundreds of Apps Can Empower Stalkers to Track Their Victims (Published 2018). [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/technology/phone-apps-stalking.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront> [Accessed 9 October 2021].
