Popular call monitoring app Truecaller has recently launched ‘Guardians’, a personal security app that helps users share location with friends and family. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can use the app to quickly contact your family members in an emergency. We’ve also covered the privacy aspects of the app, so make sure you read through to the end before trying it.
1. Install the Guardians App
The Guardians app is available on both Android and iOS. During the account creation process, the app asks for your phone number, name, gender and year of birth. You can also optionally set a profile picture for your account.
After entering this basic information, the app will ask for permission. Required permissions include contacts, location, and phone. Contacts permission is required to allow you to choose friends and family as your guardians, according to the company. It also provides: your contacts are not uploading to servers.
In addition, location permission is always required So the app can share location data with savers even when it is in the background. The app will not work unless you always allow location access (more on that in the privacy section).
Phone permission is used to view battery percentage, signal strength, and phone’s ring status. Once you allow these permissions, you will be redirected to the home page and ready to invite parents.
2. Invite the Guardians
Tap the ‘Invite Parents’ button On the homepage to invite your trusted contacts. Now select the contact from the list of contacts that appear and tap on Invite.
If the invited user has already downloaded the app, they will now receive an incoming request. They can then accept or decline the invitation request you just sent. After adding you as a guardian, you can share your location.
3. Share Location with Guardian
There are two ways to share location with your protector. ‘Follow me’ button or ‘I need help!’ You can use the button. button. In an emergency, you should use the latter. Your guardian receives a notification to check your current location.
When the user shares the location, a guardian can see the location, last seen time, distance, battery status, cellular network status, and phone ring status. There is always an option to share these details, called ‘sharing forever’, which eliminates the need to manually share the location each time.
4. What About Privacy?
Coming to the most important part, privacy. Truecaller’s Guardians app hasn’t gotten off to a positive start on the privacy front. Just one day after the app was released, security researcher Anand Prakash found a vulnerability This made it possible to track anyone’s live location through the Guardian. However, Truecaller has since fixed the bug.
Another concern is the way the app handles location data. In expression with Gadgets 360Truecaller CEO Alan Mamedi said the app does not store location data. “We don’t store it. It’s live streaming directly to the customer, so it’s never really going to touch our infrastructure,” he said. Mamedi told Gadgets 360.
However, when I perused the app’s privacy policy, I found a line that said: app shares location with backend servers even when not in use. “We send the user’s location to our back-end servers even when they do not share it with their designated guardian” reader Privacy Policy.
Although I initially dismissed it assuming it might be to show last seen status, I noticed that the app doesn’t show last seen status when the user does not share the location with their guardian. beebom Reached Truecaller for comment and will update if we hear back.
I’m also not a big fan of the app’s location permission requests. While I understand that location access is always required for a personal security application to work as intended, If you try to change the permission of the app, the Guardians app will lock you to access the location only when the app is in use.
Sharing Effects Forever
If someone manages to gain physical access to your phone, there is a very good chance that they will abuse the forever sharing feature. Disabling notifications and then hiding the app can force unsuspecting users to share their location. With others as the app can get the location in the background. While this isn’t in the hands of the app makers, it’s a possibility and something to keep in mind. To avoid this, make sure to check your trusted guardians list often within the application. there is No simple option to delete your Guardians account in the app anyone.
Try Truecaller’s Guardians Personal Security App
That’s all you need to know about Truecaller’s new Guardians app. The company has plans to bring support from community protectors and law enforcement in the future, and we’ll have to wait to see how that works out.
If you’re not happy with the company’s privacy policy, we have a guide on how you can remove your number from Truecaller’s servers. If you have any other questions about the app, let us know in the comments and we will try to help you.
