If someone offered you a superpower that would allow you to know where your phone is at any point in time, you would take it in a heartbeat. What if they offered you an app? You would probably consider the morality and legality behind its existence. What changed?
While there is always some controversy behind tracker apps, the truth is that they’re just tools that serve a simple and helpful purpose. You can use them for good or evil, but this is completely up to you.
Most people immediately think of abuses, but this doesn’t have to be a default stance. To further illustrate this point, here are the top five completely justified reasons why you might want to put a tracker on your phone (or that of your family member).
1. Easily finding your phone
Losing your phone is a terrifying thought. Aside from being a potential security breach, you might be cut off from the rest of the world. With a phone tracker, you can use another device to see exactly where it is.
Now, in a scenario where your phone gets stolen, you must respond quickly. However, this will never be your first idea unless someone snatches it from your hand. Due to positivity bias, you’re more likely to assume something convenient for you. For instance, you’ll assume you just misplaced it or left it at home or in your car.
When you retrace your steps and determine it’s stolen, the perpetrators will already be far away.
With the help of a tracer, even if you don’t immediately find it, you’ll know it’s not misplaced. This means that you can respond more quickly and have a chance of finding it.
Also, in a scenario where you did drop it someplace, it’s paramount that you’re the first one to find it. You don’t want an accidental passerby to leap on the opportunity and cash in on your lack of awareness. You’ll immediately fix this mistake by figuring out where it is.
It’s also important to note that losing your phone is stressful. Even if it’s stolen, not knowing can be worse. You’ll cut right to the chase by learning to track a cellphone and immediately get all your answers.
2. Keeping your family safe
While putting a tracker on your phone is a personal choice, sometimes, a tracker is the best way to protect your family. Every day you hear about kids getting abducted, and even if you’re living in a safe neighborhood, this fear must have crossed your mind.
Even if nothing happens, the fear alone may be enough to drive you insane. At the same time, you might feel uncomfortable bringing up this topic with your kid. So, learning how to track a cellphone discretely may be the right way to go.
This is a concept similar to that of a smartwatch. Whenever the anxiety kicks in, you take 3 seconds to peak at their whereabouts and put your mind at ease.
Now, we must tackle one ethically problematic issue – tracking a partner you suspect is cheating. While the legality of this practice may be dubious, from a moral standpoint, is this really any worse than reading their texts? Is it worse than hiring a private detective to track them (yet this practice is completely legal and even societally acceptable)?
If there’s nothing to know, there’s no harm done. If something devious happens, the sooner you know, the smaller the damage. Suspicion is like a festering wound; it’s only fatal if left untreated for too long.
3. Personal safety hack
One of the best advice for people who go hiking or backpacking is to tell someone at home where they’re at or where they’re going and to check in at certain checkpoints. The same goes for people solo traveling abroad.
There’s a direct correlation between the time one’s missing is reported and their survival chances. The same goes for an injury one has sustained in the wilderness, and the time it took help to arrive. You’ll be easy to find with the help of a tracker and a vigilant friend on the other end.
One more thing to remember is that we live in the crazy internet age. Online arguments sometimes escalate into the real world. Sure, it’s not uncommon for a person who had an online argument to threaten you, and 99.99% of the time, nothing will come out of it. Still, some online threats lead to real-world harm.
So, if you believe that your life is in danger, if you have a stalker or have received a threat (or just unwanted attention) recently, you might want to install a tracker on your phone. This way, if anything were to happen, your safety would be increased. Just a threat of a tracker would make anyone think twice about doing something dumb and reckless. This way, a tracker could act as a deterrent.
Privacy is a right and a priority, but you have the right to relinquish this right at any given moment. Some couples or friends are so co-dependent that they can’t go to the bathroom without informing each other. They talk for hours and photograph every minute detail they do throughout the day.
It would be nothing uncommon for these pairs to voluntarily install trackers on each other’s phones just to stay in touch. This way, they can become each other’s accountabilibuddy.
This can be quite helpful in more scenarios than you can envision. For instance:
- “Promise to slap me if I ever visit my ex for a late-night call.”
- “Yeah, I totally went to the gym yesterday.”
By giving your accountabilibuddy a way to tell your location at any time (or a chance to check your previous location), it will be much harder to lie to them, won’t it? This way, you can increase your odds of sticking to positive behavior than if you were just to make a scout promise and get free reign to do as you, please.
This is an additional social dimension where you sacrifice your privacy to establish a deeper connection. It’s not always a good idea, but having this option doesn’t hurt.
5. Your phone is just too precious
Lastly, when it comes to your phone, you can never be too cautious. Your phone is just that precious. Many people have a really weak unlocking pattern to make it easier for them to access their phones. They may unlock it via fingerprint, so they just make a random simple unlocking pattern without thinking twice about it.
There, however, you have so much precious data. There’s a reason why people blur their kids’ faces when uploading them online. You don’t want just about anyone to get access to these photos.
You are also logged into all your social media accounts. Here, you have all your private contacts and conversations. This is not a very comforting thought in an era where a single wrong tweet can have you fired.
It gets even worse. What if you are also logged into your m-banking and PayPal apps? With these apps in the wrong hands, you could soon be on the brink of financial ruin.
In other words, your phone is too precious, and you must protect it by any means necessary.
Putting a tracker on your phone will protect you and put your mind at ease
People always misplace their phones or forget where they put them. Every such instance, however, is a prelude to a mini panic attack. This is because we know phones’ focal point in our lives in 2023.
A tracker can also protect you and keep your family/relationships safe.
While some may see this tool as too invasive (even notorious), the truth is that it’s just a tool. How you use it can be life-saving or problematic, not the app.
