For short term push tracking, I just use Google Maps. You can send a “Location sharing” token to one or more people, and they can see your real-time movements for a period of time that you choose.
The advantage of Life 360 is you don’t have to remember to start the tracking. If my wife is at a doctor’s appointment and I want to see whether she’s left the office yet, I can see where she is, without her needing to deliberately start tracking (which she likely won’t remember to do in all cases where it would be useful).
It you both have smart phones, Google Maps will do this, with Location Sharing. Click on your user icon (top right), select Location Sharing, click New Share, and select the person. They will be notified, of course, and have to approve.
He will get that option when you set it up to track him.
This very thing was shown last week on On Patrol Live. A man was at a gas station when his car was stolen, and because his wife had a GPS tracker on it, the police were able to get updates from her about where exactly the car was and they followed the map until they got right behind the stolen vehicle, then followed the car until they were able to apprehend the thief. All this was shown live in real time.
That was fortunate the wife put a GPS on his car. Did he know about the tracker beforehand? If not, I would expect to see the couple on an upcoming episode of “Divorce Court”
Personally I would feel no guilt about tracking my loved ones(mainly kids).
Husband spends way too much time out of eyesight to roads, trails or fences.
We discussed him having a separate tracker. I don’t believe he’d get lost, he knows his woods. But if he was to fall and break a leg or have a stroke. When we missed(I’d personally want to give him a day, his kids might feel more worried)him then he could be found.
He carries his cel phone so I’m sure he could be found in service areas.
He takes his chances. They do discuss the maps and areas to hunt. So it could be pin pointed enough he feels safe.
But kids, I would have tracked phones and cars they were driving. They don’t get boundaries on their person unless I said so.
I trusted them implicitly until my eyeballs weren’t on them.
I had too many kids and less eyeballs. So I would’ve used any tool I could have. And I’m not sorry to feel this way.
The world is mean to unprotected children. Bad shit happens for lack of someone watching and stepping in.
It’s up to you if this bothers you, but Life360 sells your location data to select third parties, both in aggregate and precise location form.
Also, both iPhone and Android allow you to track other devices indefinitely without anyone needing to remember to enable tracking. You don’t have to pay a third party for that function.
Is this really conceptually different than the trackers that come in many new cars these days (like Hyundai’s Bluelink)? It’s subscription based, but you usually get the first three years free with Hyundai at least. I’m pretty sure our last Kia also came with a similar service.
Just to note, from this description, it sounds like the ad I saw recently, which was a scam. The supposed device was about the diameter of a coin and maybe twice as thick, and just had the letters ‘GPS’ on it.
GPS trackers exist, but no device as compact as that. The thing in the ad is just a magnet.
It may very well be a scam. but some of the women’s Garmin watches aren’t much bigger than that. Of course when you’re talking that small GPS battery life is probably measured in hours not days or weeks. There are a couple of Garmin watches that have built-in LTE/cellular service; the majority of them pair to a phone for their connectivity but I’m guessing what you saw an ad for didn’t have a screen either.
W/o seeing the ad, could something that small work? Yes, but you’d probably need to live with the person you want to track so you could remove it & recharge it every night & then re-placing it in the morning rather than put it on & leave it for a couple of weeks.
It also depends where you’re going to hide it. A device as small as, or smaller than a smartwatch will necessarily have very small antennae for the GPS receiver. Might work OK out in the open on your wrist, probably wouldn’t work if it’s attached under the wheel arch of a car.
This is the ad. It’s a scam. You probably receive a Bluetooth luggage tag (that isn’t even as small as the obviously fake thing in the ad), or they just send some random piece of dropshipped tat, to satisfy the tracking requirements of the marketplace site they’re selling on.
I agree that this “coin sized” GPS track is probably just some variation on an AirTag, but real trackers aren’t THAT much bigger. You could, for example, place one in the back pocket of a front seat and it probably wouldn’t be noticed. As long as it can “see” enough satellites, it would be good to go.
The primary question when it comes to tracking a car is, “Do you (or the person wanting to do the tracking) have access to the interior of the car?” The second question is, “Do you need real-time monitoring, or can it be historical?”
If you’re going to hard wire a GPS tracker to the car, just use a circuit that’s only on when the car is on. As long as you can still access it’s last known location, it can be off when the car isn’t moving.
A GPS receiver can be quite small and low powered.
For it to have a cellphone embedded so it can transmit that location to anyone else needs something bigger and more powerful.
Or the ability to piggyback via bluetooth or wi-fi to some other larger comm system. Either a phone or a car nearby. Which in turn depends on the phone’s or car’s willingness to be piggybacked upon.
