On Tuesday, some parents lost the ability to track the locations of their children using a T-Mobile tracking device and app and instead were shown the exact locations of random other children around the country, 404 Media has learned.
T-Mobile sells a small GPS tracker for parents called SyncUP, which they can use to track the locations of young children who don’t have cell phones yet. Jenna, a parent who uses SyncUP to keep track of her three-year-old and six-year-old children, logged in Tuesday and instead of seeing if her kids had left school yet, was shown the exact, real-time locations of eight random children around the country, but not the locations of her own kids. 404 Media agreed to use a pseudonym for Jenna to protect the privacy of her kids.
“I’m not comfortable giving my six-year-old a phone, but he takes a school bus and I just want to be able to see where he is in real time,” Jenna said. “I had put a 500 meter boundary around his school, so I get an alert when he’s leaving.”
Jenna sent 404 Media a series of screenshots that show her logged into the app, as well as the locations of children located in other states. In the screenshots, the address-level location of the children are available, as is their name and the last time the location was updated. In many cases, the location updated time said “just now” or “one minute ago.” It is clear the tracked people are children because their profile pictures show images of young kids wearing backpacks, and many of the locations shown are schools around the country.
I’ve not been a parent, but I think it actually sounds pretty nice to be able to check where your kid is, before a certain age.
For a young kid, who cant advocate for themselves or otherwise be trusted to know when to seek help from an adult, theres really not much expectation of privacy? You should probably know where your 6 y/o is at all times, I don’t find that particularly creepy.
The peace of mind having access to a findmy network for my keys and other devices saves me an embarrassing amount of anxiety. These are inanimate objects that are at most an inconvenience to lose, and they cant wander off on their own. Given how I’m willing to essentially track myself for keys, I can see how parents justify tracking their kids to and from school.
The sheer terror that they must sometimes feel if the bus is late or their kid decides to follow a friend home must be pretty unbearable. When they’re old enough for a phone or to otherwise access a trusted adult when needed, then I can see an argument to be made for their autonomy.