Sharing your location dot with spouse

I do a lot of solo canoeing. My wife asks "where are you going, so I know where to tell them to search for your body?" The other day she learned of somebody who tracks their kid by iPhone, came home and announced "you need to share your dot with me." I told her, "That's' no good because then you'd know when I'm at my girlfriend's house." Long gone are the days when a crack like that could get a rise out of her--she knows the girlfriend is imaginary.

It's unreasonable, but her request makes me feel like a teenager who's parents want to follow his every move.

I am curious if any of you share your location dot while out paddling. I'm wondering if it is a drain on battery life or opens you up to marketing and scams. My wife's request makes good sense, but I thought I'd ask if any of you have experience with this and can comment on pros and cons.

I use a SPOT Gen 3. Whenever I am canoeing, hiking, motorcycling, I leave my tracking on. She has access to my SPOT account. I figure even if I cant hit the panic button, they will still have an idea where to look for me.

I use an InReach (an old pre-Garmin model. not that this matters).

I have it in tracking mode whenever I am moving, any of my followers who have the link to my Garmin tracking page can see exactly where I am. A track point will appear every ten minutes.

My Inreach when fully charged will function for at least 10 days (8 hours/day in tracking mode plus texting back and forth and obtaining daily weather forecasts. I carry several rechargeable devices, use power banks to recharge in the field.

Pros

People can vicariously follow you
In an emergency you can contact help
Making arrangements for a pick up
You have a history of your trip (could be done with a regular GPS with no Sat Comm function)
Weather reports (most of these devices now offer this)

Negs

Some people object to being followed or being "attached" to the outside world
It costs money to buy the device and to maintain a service subscription


Years ago I used a SPOT device (Ver 1), it did not have the ability to send/receive messages other than generic OK or Help. Those old devices have been pretty much replaced by the ones that offer two way communication.

I turn on my Zoleo when on trips or hunting away from cell service. That's been good enough so far. At this point, she knows better than to ask, lol. She does use Life360 with our teens. It was part of the deal when we got them phones. We don't monitor it closely or set geofence alerts or any of that hover-y stuff. Wife does get an alert if they are going faster than 75mph. That was part of the deal struck when they wanted to use our vehicles.

Phone tracking:
Pros: you know where the other person is.
Cons: the other person knows where you are.

I don't rely on my cell phone for communication when I head out for a solo canoeing adventure (or snowshoeing, etc.) but have agreed to bring a Garmin inReach device. If I had good cell phone coverage that's what I'd use to check in, but I often find that I don't have reliable coverage.

The biggest advantage to the inReach device is that I can get satellite coverage almost everywhere I go. I send a short text message when I check in. My spouse likes the check-ins, which include a track of my route shown on an internet map link.

Chip said:

share your location dot

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I had no idea what a location dot is, much less how to share one, so I had to look it all up. For android phones, the Google Maps app is evidently used. Well, I've never used Google Maps on a phone either. I rarely use my smart phone for anything, actually, so it probably wasn't too smart of me to buy one.

So, the answer is, no, I don't and won't share my location dot with my wife or anyone else. For day trip canoeing, which is all I've done for several years, I just tell her where I'm paddling. None of her business when I'm visiting @Chip's girlfriend before or after.

The "dot" is a smartphone thing, those devices are ALWAYS tracking you if you are within cell range (and soon Sat range).

I assumed the discussion was restricted to off grid tracking.

If we are talking local trips....

Where are you going? - Out
What for? - I have stuff to do
Can I come? - No
When will you be back? - Later (actually a reasonable question which I will normally provide at least a 2 hour window)

On trips, I carry an inReach and, like recped, I share the link publicly (on here, in fact). Last trip, I stopped by mem's house but no girlfriends were visited.

Especially as we age, it IS helpful to be able to tell SAR where to start looking for remains. Maybe compromise and only turn on location when you're beyond city limits?

Pros: safety, peace of mind for the family, SOS button for emergencies in which I don't die
Cons: I did worry that some overzealous do-gooder would tip off the cops that a beat-up Ford Ranger was approaching such-and-such a point at an extremely high rate of speed. (it always is & thanks to all for not reporting me)

PS: the girlfriend angle is another argument for paddling strip canoes... "I'm taking a stripper out for the weekend... see ya in a few days if I survive."

When I was making a lot of solo bushwhack wilderness trips, I would leave a written semi-itinerary, although I often modified some of my destinations and routes in real time. The DEC forest rangers would know where to look for me from my baseline route. Often when on a multti-day trip I would tell the wife I would be home at least a half day later than I had actually planned in reality, which ccould account for weather delay in paddling back in a windstorm. If I was late from that, she knew if the weather was bad that I was smart enough to be holed up. If returning early, I could wallk in the door before expected and SURPRISE!

Thankfully my wife doesn't know the "dot" exists. It's bad enough I have to carry a satellite device with me to check in once I'm safely in camp each night!

I still don't have any sort of emergency radio/beacon/phone, etc. so when I leave on a trip, I leave a detailed itinerary for my wife. She also knows not to call anyone until I'm overdue by half a day. This gives her some comfort as to my whereabouts and still gives me some time to make it home if I get delayed for some reason. So far this arrangement has worked for us. Of course, I don't do long solo trips any longer so it seems to meet her comfort level and still allows me to get out on short adventures.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper

Been camping for more decades than I want to admit, almost all of my camping is in no service areas. I decided a beacon would be a good idea, in case some one got hurt or needed help fast.
Carried that beacon for 4 years, thinking I could be of help if something happened. Then on day 2 of a 7 day trip, I destroyed my ankle on a bad portage .... it is not a recommended way of getting a helicopter ride.

For those of you who carry some sort of beacon, cudos for being prepared, for those that don't ... it was wet, cold and pretty remote, I am glad I didn't have to try and make do for 5 days. The some one who may need help could be you one day, be prepared IMO.

Patrick Corry said:

Thankfully my wife doesn't know the "dot" exists.

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Neither does mine. But she reads the site. (Hi, maggie!)

No. I don't have a gps, I don't have an inreach. I paddle alone most of the time. I carry my basic flip phone in
a waterproof box. I don't carry a gun. I'm not afraid of bears and wolves.
I like maps and compasses and the idea that I am on my own to solve my own problems... it keeps me honest.

I got some laughs out of your responses. We have some under-appreciated comedians on this site!

I forgot about GPS/Spot tracking for off network travels. In the context of "share your spot with me", it slipped my mind that I had used a Spot device when traveling on the Missouri, the Green, and the Rio Grande. I don't have a spot but borrowed from a friend for those trips, and shared the links to the tracking maps with several people, including my wife. I don't think she used them much, but she did appreciate the daily, "we're okay" message. My resistance to sharing my dot, now that she asked me to, shows I'm being unreasonable.

I think in the last year, there have only been two trips where I was off-network, and neither were solo trips. She doesn't worry about it if I'm paddling with others. Mostly I'm a day tripper, and cell coverage is pretty good, so I was just talking about sharing the "dot" in Apple Maps. If I really object to it, I should just get a Spot, or In-Reach to give her peace of mind. Or only share when I'm out paddling solo, as G1214 suggests.

It amazes me how much data the tech companies gather on us. If you use a mobile phone app for way finding on the highway, when you see the traffic indicators (red line on Apple), that's derived in near real time from the location data they are sucking up from driver's phones (and transponders in trucks). The companies say they get data from "a variety of sources," never fully acknowledging it's from our phones. And phone location data plays a role in the map making. Apple gets their map data from about 9 different companies, plus the geolocation data they collect from user's phones. Apple now has routing for bicycles and hikers. There are some social trails on their maps that I can't imagine how they learned of, unless it's from tracking the phones of people walking on the trails. Harmless, they say. All the data is anonymized, they say. I used to tell my wife if you need to find my body, just contact the Chinese, they have all our data. That's what I used to say. Now, I'm turning on my dot.

I got a Garmin InReach for backcountry travel after a very bad incident with a friend out of cell service a couple years back. I decided that it was irresponsible for, with my loved ones and SAR teams in mind, to not have one. But I only activate it for backcountry trips.

I keep my phone's GPS off nearly all the time to limit, as best I can (haha), involuntary tracking of me. The exception is when I go poling by myself on moving water, then I share my location in Google Maps w my wife. Otherwise for day paddles I just tell her where I'm going.

I have no problem sharing my location. At 72 a lot can happen so I think it is important. Plus she enjoyed seeing where we were in the BWCA. I think it pinged every 4 hours to save battery life so she didn’t see the nuances.
Jim

Our family uses Life360 on our cell phones. Personally I got no problem with being tracked. If anything I get a little depressed that nobody really cares to track me.

I know some people feel thats creepy and such. I honestly don’t understand that feeling. Not like I’m invisible, trying to hide or something.

Chip said:

If you use a mobile phone app for way finding on the highway, when you see the traffic indicators (red line on Apple), that's derived in near real time from the location data they are sucking up from driver's phones (and transponders in trucks). The companies say they get data from "a variety of sources," never fully acknowledging it's from our phones.

Click to expand...

I'm so naive and ignorant about smart phones that I never knew any of this. Can I stop this tracking if I turn off the GPS location function on my phone?

The built-in navigation system in my car can show traffic flow patterns if I pay for that option via my Sirius satellite radio subscription, which I no longer do. Does Sirius likely use cell phone data too?

Chip said:

I used to tell my wife if you need to find my body, just contact the Chinese, they have all our data.

Click to expand...

If I wanted to increase my body tracking, would it help if I posted some dance videos on TikTok?

So much technology, so many questions, so little time. You have to have a Ph.D (or be eight years old) even to figure out how to watch a simple basketball game nowadays with all the competing, conflicting and changing cable channels, streaming platforms, internet providers . . . ad nauseum.

With regard to smart phones, regardless of whether or not you turn off GPS, your cell phone location can be tracked and triangulated very accurately based on the cell towers with which it interacts.

Though not readily available at the consumer level, the data is sold, resold and used in myriad ways, certainly for advertising but also law enforcement, etc.

And while the data that is packaged for sale is always ostensibly anonymized, it can be parsed through to identify individual people much more readily than you might expect. So, if you have any cell phone (smart or otherwise), you simply can’t count on location privacy.

The tracking becomes even more accurate when phones are set to seek out publicly available WiFi connections, which have a much smaller distribution radius than cell towers.

Here’s a chilling look:


Nonetheless, I use a smart phone and drive a smart car and enjoy the benefits of doing so. I do run a VPN (virtual private network) on both my cellphone and computers for a modicum of browsing privacy (that way no one will ever know how much time I spend on CT.net), but I don’t think it makes too much difference over time.