Live Location Tracking of Your Friends in Real Time Coming to WhatsApp
Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp is currently working on a new feature dubbed live location tracking. Once this feature is live on WhatsApp beta version 2.17.3.28 for iOS, 2.16.399+ on Android, users will be able to track the whereabouts of their friends and family in real time.
So, whether you are in WhatsApp group chat or on a personal message with someone, your exact location can be spotted. But according to a Twitter user, WABetaInfo, exactly where your location will be made visible isn’t clear.
Recall that WhatsApp updated her privacy terms of service sometimes last year to begin sharing users info on Facebook. Naturally, a feature like this has the potential to raise concerns with regards to privacy. Fortunately, those privacy fears were short lived.
To address these concerns this time around, the Live Location feature will be disabled until the user manually opts in via the app’s settings menu. Imagine for a second if this wasn’t the case. All those of you who say they are 5mins away when they are yet to leave the house will be exposed.
Live Location Tracking: In Or Out?
For those who will rather not want people to know their location per time, but who would find the feature useful in certain scenarios will have the option to enable Live Location Tracking for a limited period of time, with one-, two- and five-minute option.
Other interesting features has been spotted in the app’s Android beta. If you can still remember, In December last year, WhatsApp added the features to edit and even recall sent messages, in order to avoid potential embarrassment.
With 160 million users in India, WhatsApp is available in more than 50 different languages around the world and in 10 Indian languages. Nearly 100 million calls are being made on the platform daily worldwide.
WhatsApp recently launched a video calling feature from India which was rolled out globally to other countries. The feature is available on all platforms — Android, iOS and Windows.