Allyson Chiu for The Washington Post:
As the car carrying Catrina Cramer Alexander and her family navigated the dark two-lane road that snaked through the dense forests near Pilot Mountain in North Carolina, the mother’s eyes were glued to her iPhone screen. It was late on June 7 and Alexander was searching for her daughter, Macy Smith, who had missed curfew and wasn’t answering her phone. According to the locator app on Alexander’s phone, the 17-year-old was nearby.
The small pulsating blue dot that marked Alexander’s location kept moving closer and closer to where Smith was supposed to be, when suddenly, something caught her eye: a set of tire tracks running off the road.
“That’s all I could see,” Alexander told WFMY.
But the app, Apple’s Find My Friends, wasn’t wrong. Smith was there. Hidden from view, about 25 feet down the side of a tree-covered embankment, the teenager had been trapped in the wreckage of her car for almost seven hours – and she was alive.
“Having that location, if we didn’t have that, we would have never known where to look,” Alexander told WXII. “I’m certain that that is what saved her life.”
MacDailyNews Take: Another life saved, thanks to Apple!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Yes but they want to make this technology against the law for the sake of privacy, calling it stalker ware.
Jeff, what are you talking about? Who wants to make this illegal? If the mother and daughter had Family Sharing and Location Sharing enabled, there’s no stalking involved, and nobody is trying to outlaw this.
Agree with you Jim. My family, spread across 4 states each have “Find My Friends” and use it to track each other when we travel. Jeff doesn’t understand the concept. It is a send a request to your relative or friend and they must reply back to you. Then you two or how ever many is on your family/friend list (who have done the double confirmation) can see each other.