What FriendTrack is, and what it is not

FriendTrack answers one question: where are the people I came here with? You are at a festival, on a piste, in a park, at a venue — and you want to find each other without a phone call and without describing which food stall you are standing next to.

It does that by sharing your Position (what other apps call live tracking) with a Group of people, on a picture of the place you are all in, for a length of time you pick.

The model, in three sentences

You are on nobody’s map until you start Sharing. Installing the app, signing in, making a Group, joining a Group, adding somebody as a friend — none of it makes you visible. Visibility begins with a deliberate tap on a length of time and ends when that time runs out.

Sharing is with one Group, for one stretch of time. Not with everybody, not with the app, and not until further notice. You can share with the people you are skiing with today and not with the Group you were at a festival with in July.

It ends by itself. You pick one hour, or four, or eight; when the time is up the session stops and nobody has to remember to switch anything off. That is the single most important design decision in the product, and it is the reason there is no permanent on/off switch to forget about.

What it is not

• It is not a way to find a lost phone. There is no way to look up a device that is not in a Group with you and not sharing.
• It is not a record of where anybody has been. No history is kept and there is no trail to replay. Your Group has your latest Position and how old it is, and that is the whole of it.
• It is not something a parent, an employer or a partner can switch on for you. Nobody can start a session on your behalf, and no Group setting overrides that. The Group’s admin can remove you from a Group; they cannot make you visible in it.
• It is not a street map. It draws people on an image of the actual venue — a piste map, a site plan — because a street map of a festival field is a green rectangle. See why FriendTrack shows a venue image.
• It is not always on in the background by design. Sharing keeps running when your phone is in your pocket, and it stops if the app is closed by you or by your phone. See does it keep sharing in the background?.

What it costs

Nothing to install, sign in, join Groups and share. The free allowance lets you create one Group and hold one Map, and lets a session run up to eight hours; more than that is FriendTrack Pro.

Where to go next

• You were sent an invitation. Join a Group you were invited to.
• You are starting from scratch. Sign in with your phone number, then create a Group.
• You want to know exactly what other people can see. What your friends can and cannot see.

The full terms, and the privacy policy that explains how your data is handled, are linked from the sign-in screen and from friendtrack.net.