# Google Maps Timeline



## FalCod (Dec 6, 2017)

I see a lot of ideas tossed out here for how to check up on a potentially WS - voice activated recorders planted in the car, checking e-mail, checking texts, etc. One that I haven't seen is Google Maps Timeline. Just do a search and the link will come up.

If I pull up that URL on my computer, it shows me everyplace my phone has been where it has had a GPS signal and decent connectivity. It is organized by day. I can pick any day going back many years and see exactly where I was and when.

To use it requires having access to the spouses google/gmail login information. I leave myself logged into my Google account all the time, as does my wife. If she ever wants to see where I was at any given time, it's easy to check (and I could do the same for her). I suppose that it is possible to selectively delete location information (I haven't tried, so I'm just assuming).

Everyone in our family also uses the Google Trusted Connections app. That allows us to request the location of each other's phone in realtime. It has come in handy when we've been concerned that we've lost a phone. It can also be helpful when someone isn't home when you expect them to be. You can set it up to respond with the location almost immediately or with a delay. The phone operator can override and refuse to provide their location. We have the delay turned off because it sucks to have wait 5 minutes to locate a lost phone. We found that out when my wife thought she'd lost her phone while walking around the finishing area of a race only to find out after five nervous minutes that she'd left it in the car.

One other way to get location information is from a picture. I suppose a particularly clever and devious person could call their spouse and ask that they take a picture of the back of the credit card or some other seemingly innocuous request and e-mail the picture to them. Then you could look at the EXIF data on the picture to determine the location. Not sure that this would worked with a texted picture because the EXIF is probably stripped off.


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## Mizzbak (Sep 10, 2016)

FalCod - Good point and pretty easy to do. Especially for a first-time BS who is unsure about whether there is anything there to worry about and desperately hoping that they're wrong. Google Timeline was hugely helpful to me in understanding the full extent of my husband's behaviour. And to him as well (because he tended to have less than perfect recall when it came to his most extreme behaviour.) 

Probably the only issue that I'd highlight is that it is possible to edit and/or "manipulate" the data after the fact from one's Google account. No doubt this would be noticeable, but something can probably be hidden if the data isn't being looked at too carefully. And of course, switching off the phone or disabling the timeline function for a short period of time.

(As you can tell, I've put a little effort into thinking about possible get-arounds on this.) 

I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't be a useful tool a second time if I ever needed it. But that is surely the case for all the ways a wayward was previously caught? And if I ever find myself in the position of being concerned enough to need to look again, then there are far bigger issues to deal with than minute-by-minute whereabouts.


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## fotf17 (Sep 25, 2017)

Timeline is handy for sure, though when I went through it, I found my issue was that my spouse always has her GPS turned off. Not necessarily for any nefarious purposes during the period for which I was worried; this was a practice of her's since long ago - when we started using our smartphones years ago (and years before). (Largely related to our thought that using gps decreased battery life - became a habit after awhile.)


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## MattMatt (May 19, 2012)

FalCod said:


> I see a lot of ideas tossed out here for how to check up on a potentially WS - voice activated recorders planted in the car, checking e-mail, checking texts, etc. One that I haven't seen is Google Maps Timeline. Just do a search and the link will come up.
> 
> If I pull up that URL on my computer, it shows me everyplace my phone has been where it has had a GPS signal and decent connectivity. It is organized by day. I can pick any day going back many years and see exactly where I was and when.
> 
> ...


Google Maps Timeline *cannot* be trusted.

There are a number of faults and errors with Google Maps.

For example it will record you as having visited such-and-such an address, when at best you just went past it or at worst were even in the next street.


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## Mizzbak (Sep 10, 2016)

MattMatt said:


> Google Maps Timeline *cannot* be trusted.
> 
> There are a number of faults and errors with Google Maps.
> 
> For example it will record you as having visited such-and-such an address, when at best you just went past it or at worst were even in the next street.


I think that this is a case of it being too clever for its own good about how much it knows about your life. (And the sex shop next door to the bakery can confuse things.) 
It can be helpful in those situations to look at the raw data (screen bottom right). It has a indication of error (grey circle size) and a time stamp for each logged point. So a cluster of points around a single location over an extended period is far more convincing than the one or two single points that were probably from pausing nearby at a traffic light. 

I agree with MattMatt that it is sub-optimal and the information needs to be looked at carefully. But sometimes (especially after the fact) unfortunately, this is as good as it gets.


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