Life360 Trigger Help Alerts (Dispatch Corner)
The Life360 app remains to be a largely popular app providing location based technology with close family and friends. Any user can choose a circle of their closest friends and family to be able to see their location at all times. With this application, parents can use it to be notified when their children leave school on the bus as well as when they arrive at home. Spouses too can be notified when their other half leaves the office or the gym, and when they arrive home. This app also has some special features which allows some tracking of driving speeds so even if your child may not be the driver, you can see how fast the vehicle was in motion while they were in it. This may be useful in trials involving car crashes and is part of the free service Life360 offers with many more benefits as well. Life360’s paid service provides crash detection which will notify everyone in their circle and dispatch emergency services if needed.
Recently, 911 operators in Florida received a 911 call in reference to a person receiving an emergency Help Alert from the LIFE 360 app. Apparently, the caller had been added to a friend’s Life360 Help Alerts and Emergency Contacts without knowing it. According to Life360, the people you designate as your emergency contacts need to accept your text invitation to receive Help Alert phone calls, but this may not always be the case . Either way, the caller received the Help Alert message that Life360 detected an emergency with their friend and provided an address. They then reported that address to law enforcement to conduct a well-being check.
Life360 also provides emergency data access to law enforcement for a missing person who has this app, but does allow users to opt out if they do not want law enforcement to be provided their location in the event they were to go missing. The default appears to”allow”, but users can turn this off. Family members should consider installing this on a phone of a person who is known to go missing as this may be a quicker and safer alternative to locate them.
Recently, police were able to link a factory arson that destroyed over a million dollars in property by convincing the suspect’s son to give them access to his Life360 app as he was in his dad’s circle and could see his locations. Police requested the son upgrade to the paid version, which cost $8.00 to track up to 30 days previously as the free version does not show locations that far back. This covered the day of the fire and detectives could clearly see the suspect was at the factory at the time of the fire. They authored a search warrant to Life360 as well and requested all previous location coordinate information, movement activity, driver behavior monitoring, and specific times the cellphone was moving and stationary. (https://bit.ly/2SXjd6Y)
Keep in mind, this is a great tool for friends/family if their phone is stolen, but time is of the essence as suspects may turn it off. Have the police reach out quickly to your circle to obtain the possible location for your phone.
To use the Help Alert button, simply click the “+” sign at the bottom of the app and click “Help Alert”. A countdown of 10 seconds will begin and once it finishes will call and text each emergency contact and circle member. (https://bit.ly/3bP7Nea)
HOMEWORK: To add emergency contacts, click on the safety button and then choose from your contacts who you would like to receive these messages.
