Google Maps’ New Feature Adds Yet Another Privacy Concern

Google has definitely made some progress in the field of privacy through the years. More often than not we still see cases where the company’s newest services and features are found to include sneaky secondary effects, leading to yet another court case where Google is sued for privacy violations. The concern-raiser this time: a new Google Maps feature that allows anyone to share their real time location with friends. It was quickly revealed the new feature can be easily exploited by wrongdoers. Next time a friend or colleague wants to exchange your current location with each other, should you just forget about using it altogether or can you avoid having your location exposed?

On the other hand though, one of the main concerns this could raise is the fact that locations are simply shared by this same link, which in turn can be copied and pasted and, therefore, shared by anyone without you having a clue about it. Think of this real-case scenario: if you happen to share the link with your contacts while using an insecure public Wi-Fi, any eavesdroppers that may be in the network will be able to easily access and share it with whomever they want. Along the same lines, the new location sharing feature can help stalkers and relationship abusers pursue their victims since it gives them access to real-time location data. Google is well aware of this and it actually worked with the so-called Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse group to understand how it can assure those who live in abusive relationships can have their privacy assured.