Are Location Sharing Apps Safe? A Family Privacy Checklist

Are location sharing apps safe? They can be, but it depends on two things. The first is the app: how the company makes money and what it does with your location. The second is the people: who can see you, and whether everyone sharing actually chose to. A trustworthy app with the wrong person on your list isn’t safe, and neither is the right family on an app that sells its users’ data. This guide gives you a 10-point checklist for judging any app, a sourced timeline of Life360’s data sales, and the steps to see who can see your location right now.

The short answer: are location sharing apps safe?

Sharing your location with people you trust is common and, for most families, a reasonable choice. CivicScience found in April 2025 that 41% of U.S. adults share their location with at least one person. Among them, 52% share with a spouse or partner, about a third with their children and 24% with their parents.

The risks are real, but they are specific:

• The company. An app that sells or leaks location data puts a detailed record of your life in other hands.
• The people. Someone on your list may use it to monitor or control you, or someone may get into your account.
• The phone. Hidden trackers or stalkerware you never agreed to. Not a location sharing app, but often the real worry.

Each one has a fix.

Why location data is so sensitive

A location app sees your phone’s precise position. On Android, precise location is usually within about 50 metres and sometimes within a few metres, according to Google’s developer documentation. Apple’s App Store privacy labels count any coordinate with three or more decimal places as precise location. Collected over weeks, those points show where you sleep, work, worship and see a doctor.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission says geolocation data can reveal “not just where a person lives and whom they spend time with”, but also visits to medical clinics, places of worship and shelters for people fleeing abuse. Its recent cases show how that data travels, often through code embedded in ordinary apps:

None of these is a family locator app. The lesson is the pipeline: location collected by an app, passed on through an SDK or a sale, then resold. So the first questions to ask of any locator are whether it sells data and what third-party code it carries.

Does Life360 sell your data? A dated timeline

Life360 is a popular family locator, with features many families value, including crash detection on its paid plans. It also has a well-documented history with location data. Here are the facts, as of October 2026:

• December 6, 2021. The Markup reported that Life360, then used by 33 million people, sold precise location data to about a dozen data brokers, including X-Mode, Cuebiq and SafeGraph, as well as Allstate’s Arity. It reported that Life360 earned $16 million from location data in 2020, nearly 20% of revenue, plus about $6 million from the Arity partnership.
• January 27, 2022. In a quarterly report, Life360 said it would stop selling precise location data to those brokers. It kept Arity as a partner and agreed to give Placer.ai only aggregated data. Users could opt out of data sales in the app’s privacy settings.
• April 2022. Life360’s 2021 annual report disclosed requests for information about its data protection practices from U.S. regulators. The regulators weren’t named, and no outcome was reported.
• January 2023. A proposed class action filed in federal court in Northern California alleged Life360 sold location data without consent. Life360 said it intended to defend against the claim.
• Today. Life360’s help centre says Drive Detection, Crash Alerts, driving reports and drive history are powered by Arity and switch off if you turn off data sharing with Arity. Sharing driving data with insurers for personalised quotes is opt-in; if you opt in, Life360 shares precise location and phone motion-sensor data with Arity, and you can opt out later in the app’s Privacy Center.

So, does Life360 sell your data today? It said in 2022 that it would stop selling precise location data to brokers; its driving features rely on data sharing with Arity; and insurer sharing is opt-in. If you use it, review the settings in its Privacy Center. If you’d rather switch, our guide to free Life360 alternatives compares what each option includes and lacks.

A 10-point privacy checklist for any location sharing app

Use this before you install, and again when an app changes its policy. Most answers are in the privacy policy, the Data safety section on Google Play and the App Privacy label on the App Store. Those labels are the developer’s own statements (Google notes that even an independent security review doesn’t verify their accuracy), so treat them as a starting point.

1. How does it make money? Subscriptions, ads or data partnerships each pull in a different direction. If you can’t tell how a free app pays for itself, ask before you hand over your location.
2. Does it sell or share location data? Look for the words “sell”, “data brokers” and sharing with partners for their own purposes. Apple defines tracking as linking your app data with third-party data for targeted ads, or sharing it with a data broker. A locator that tracks you in that sense fails this test.
3. Does it carry ad or analytics SDKs? X-Mode and InMarket collected location through SDKs embedded in other apps. Apple requires developers to declare data collected by third-party SDKs, so check the label for anything beyond the app’s own use.
4. How long is your history kept? Look for a specific period, such as 30 days, rather than “as long as necessary”.
5. Who can see you? It should be only the people you’ve added, in a list you can check at any time. Know whether a share is a public link: Google Maps link shares, for example, show your location to anyone with the link for up to 24 hours.
6. How do people join? Can anyone with a code walk into your group, or must an admin approve them? You should be able to see and remove members.
7. Can you pause, and can everyone tell? Pausing shouldn’t mean uninstalling. And sharing should never be hidden: the Nuffield Foundation’s 2025 report on monitoring recommends that tracking be clearly disclosed to the person affected, at all times and on every device. An app with a stealth mode fails here.
8. Can you delete your account and data? Google Play requires apps with accounts to offer deletion both in the app and on the web. Check that it deletes your history, not just your profile.
9. How secure is sign-in? NNEDV’s Safety Net project points out that anyone with access to your Apple or Google account can see where your phone is, and the same goes for a locator account. Use a unique password or sign in with Apple or Google, and turn on two-factor authentication.
10. Is it transparent? A readable, dated policy, a real contact and a promise to update the policy before practices change. NNEDV advises reading the policy to learn how your information is used and shared, and the FTC suggests deleting apps that ask for more permissions than they need.

We apply this list in our roundup of the best free family locator apps.

How to check who can see your location

Do this every few months, and straight away if something feels off.

On iPhone: Safety Check

On iOS 16 or later, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Safety Check. You need two-factor authentication on your Apple Account. It offers two paths:

• Manage Sharing & Access lets you review, person by person and app by app, what you share, including your location in Find My, then check your devices, phone numbers, password and emergency contacts.
• Emergency Reset stops sharing with all people and apps at once.

A Quick Exit button closes Settings instantly and keeps the changes you’ve made. Safety Check doesn’t cover non-Apple apps, social media, or devices signed in to a different Apple Account, so check those separately. Apple also notes that when you stop sharing in Find My the person isn’t notified, and that deleting the Find My app doesn’t stop sharing.

On Android

Google has no single equivalent of Safety Check, so check each of these:

• Google Location Sharing: Settings → Location → Location services → Google Location Sharing. Tap the list of people and tap Stop next to anyone you want to remove. Google says this setting is specific to the device and account, so repeat it on every device you’re signed in to. Stopping a share stops it in Google Maps and Find Hub alike.
• Unknown tracker alerts (Android 6 and later): Settings → Safety & emergency → Unknown tracker alerts → Scan now looks for a tag, such as an AirTag, travelling with you.

In family locator apps

Open each group or circle and read the member list. Remove anyone who no longer needs to see you, check who has admin rights, and leave groups you don’t use.

Hidden trackers on iPhone

iPhones warn you about an unknown AirTag on iOS 14.5 or later, and about compatible third-party trackers on iOS 17.5 or later. If you find one and feel unsafe, Apple advises going to a safe public place and contacting law enforcement.

On a shared phone plan

The account holder on a shared phone plan may be able to track the location of a phone on it. In the U.S., The Hotline explains that the Safe Connections Act lets survivors of abuse move their line, and the lines of people in their care, off an abuser’s plan and keep their numbers. Carriers must do it within two business days.

When sharing turns into control

Sharing a location isn’t the problem in itself. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner says couples and families shouldn’t be discouraged from sharing; the red flag is an expectation of tracking someone all the time, especially alongside other controlling behaviour. In eSafety’s 2025 research, 13.6% of Australian adults, and 18.6% of 18- to 24-year-olds, agreed it is reasonable to expect to track a partner whenever they want.

Warning signs, drawn from The Hotline and the FTC:

• Someone demands to know where you go, or uses technology to monitor your activities.
• They know your exact location when you haven’t told them.
• Your phone suddenly drains fast, uses unexpected data or overheats, which the FTC lists as possible signs of stalkerware.

If that sounds familiar, think before you change anything. NNEDV’s Safety Net project advises trusting your instincts and, if it is safe, documenting what’s happening first, because changing settings can alert the other person and the abuse may get worse. The FTC likewise advises talking to a domestic violence advocate before removing stalkerware. The safest option may be a new phone with accounts the other person can’t access, set up without restoring from an old backup.

Safe habits for families

Most family sharing is caring, not controlling. These habits keep it that way:

• Keep groups small and purposeful. Share with the people who need it, for the reason they need it.
• Make it visible and two-way. The 2026 Mott Poll found that 52% of parents of 18- to 25-year-olds track their location. Among them, 96% said their child knows, but only 54% gave the child the option not to be tracked. Offering that choice matters.
• Agree when you’ll look: when someone is late, while travelling, in an emergency. Not out of habit.
• Agree that pausing is OK, and how to tell the family when you do.
• Review the list every few months, and whenever a relationship changes.

With children, involve them from the start. If you’re weighing it up for an older child, our guide on whether parents should track their teenager’s location covers how to do it fairly.

How GPSforFamily answers the checklist

We make GPSforFamily, so hold us to the same standard. These answers come from our privacy policy; where something depends on you, or on Apple and Google, we say so.

As our policy says, no system is perfectly secure; we keep only what the service needs. Whatever app you choose, the checklist above is the part worth keeping.