need to share my location with some people, are there any services that respect privacy? paid is alright as long as im the only one who has to pay (like if i can be a paid user but free users can view my location)

just dont wanna use google maps but if thats all there is then whatever

already checked out owntracks and zood, neither worked for me (needs to be cross platform)

EDIT: in response the responses, no self hosting, and has to be just ready to install, no buildning it yourself

im willing to sacrifice privacy here over ease of use, just hope i dont have to

  • nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de
    5·
    4 months ago

    You can Nextcloud hosting from a reputed provider like Hetzner. install the maps plugin and you’ll be able to share location with users. Since you’ll be the admin, you can make as many accounts as you want.

  • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 months ago

    I don’t know how much my privacy is actually being respected but I do go for the “use as many different services as possible so no company knows absolutely everything about me.” Approach.

    I have a Garmin watch. I press a button on it twice, and within a minute or so a group of people I selected recieve an email with a live link, that shows my path and current location. Once I press the button again my live location ends but the list of people can still see my whole “activity”. I think that expires on 24 hours but I’m not sure on that.

    It’s use is supposedly to show off exercising? I use it when I’m out hunting public land and might be wandering away from my truck or driving to several nearby trailheads in a day and don’t want to have to remember to tell my other half “I know I said I was going to Fish Lake but so got distracted and stopped at Deer mountain and then drove to Owlfield but I parked on the south side of the trailhead but ended up walking north 3 miles…”

    • chickenf622@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      4 months ago

      Companies do share data either directly or indirectly, so I don’t think your approach of spreading it out is as effective as you think it is. Still not the worst thing to do in addition to other measures though. Another thing is to use a unique email address for each site to make that one common data point no longer common.

      • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
        1·
        4 months ago

        Yep I do the email thing. And yeah, I know they all share everything, but at least I make them work for it.

  • smpl@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    What are your expectations for the software? I assume it’s not enough to use a group chat and tell people where you are, but from the description you’ve given that would be my suggestion.

    • strawberry@kbin.earthOP
      3·
      4 months ago

      live location. as in every few minutes it getd updayed. these people know where I’m supposed to be, the issue is if I’m suddenly not there. I’m going to a festival with thousands of people, who knows what can happen

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 months ago

    My go-to will be simply to use a maps app and then share it over messages (Signal, etc…)

  • BlameItOnSomeone@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    Glympse is a possible app I’ve used for this in the past. You set a time in the app that you’d want to share for, and others can either view in an app - else they can watch via a unique web link on any platform.

  • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    4 months ago

    I’m afraid your best bet here will be using WhatsApp.

    Edit:
    FindMy (for Android) might also be usable for that, but honestly if you just want it to work I’d still vouch for WhatsApp.

    • rhymepurple@lemmy.mlEnglish
      9·
      4 months ago

      This is definitely the wrong answer for this community, but may be an acceptable answer for this post. I have never used it nor would I ever recommend using it, but the conversations I have had with others who do use it make it seem like the service is far better than any alternative. Given the OP’s requirements and willingness to both pay and sacrifice privacy, it seems like this may be appropriate for OP.

      I would still explore other options though. There are several competitors to Life360 and presumably there are some with better privacy policies (even if the service would not typically be recommended on this community). Maybe OP could use a service like https://tosdr.org or https://tldrlegal.com to better evaluate those options that would likely not get much attention on this community.

      Depending on the required features, maybe the Live Location Sharing feature of chat apps like Element may be sufficient. It could also help improve the privacy of the users’ by switching to a more private/secure messaging app in the process.