The Apple iOS 5 Find My Friends app seems to have been instrumental in catching a cheating wife, as the app was activated by a suspicious husband hoping to catch her in the act.
We say in the act, although Find My Friends doesn't utilise the iPhone's camera in any way, but it helped locate said wife in a place she said she wasn't.
An extract from the suspicious husband on the 9to5Mac forum follows:
"I got my wife a new 4s and loaded up find my friends without her knowing. She told me she was at her friends house in the east village. I've had suspicions about her meeting this guy who lives uptown. Lo and behold, Find my Friends has her right there.
"I just texted her asking where she was and the dumb b!otch said she was on 10th Street!! Thank you Apple, thank you App Store, thank you all. These beautiful treasure trove of screen shots going to play well when I meet her a$$ at the lawyer's office in a few weeks.
So there you go, another marriage bites the dust. However, the scenario does raise interesting questions regarding privacy; it's not that there aren't similar services available, Google Latitude has been around for an age, but as with everything with the "i" prefix, having Apple involved will no doubt make GPS location trendy. More people using Find My Friends will possibly mean more scenarios not unlike the one above.
Of course, in the set-up of Find My Friends you have to accept invitations to share, but there is nothing to stop someone activating this when you're not looking.
The burning issue seems to be that it is a very powerful tool to have, bringing with it huge amounts of info to the user as well as delivering plenty of info about the user to others. For some this power will outdo the user's knowledge of how to use it properly - as with services like Facebook, aspects of privacy aren't always addressed.
Still, on the up side, maybe Siri will be able to offer some marriage guidance advice.
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