Apps that involve people’s locations need to have the strictest standards when it comes to the actual handling of that data. After all, you don’t want your location, or the location of someone you care about, to end up in the wrong hands. Still, mistakes happen sometimes.
A nightmarish mistake is happening to a number of T-Mobile customers who are having the location of their kids exposed to other parents. Creepy stuff.
T-Mobile is addressing a significant privacy breach this week after a glitch in its SyncUP GPS child-tracking service exposed the real-time locations and personal details of unknown children to its users. Instead of monitoring their own children, numerous parents logging into the app were reportedly shown the precise locations, names, and location update times for random children across the country, while being unable to see their own kids’ data.
The issue itself was first reported on by 404 Media (via Gizmodo), and it gained traction as concerned users shared their experiences on platforms like Reddit and X.
One user, identified only as “Jenna” to protect her children’s privacy, detailed her experience. She uses SyncUP to track her three- and six-year-old children, particularly monitoring when her son leaves school via bus. Last Tuesday, she logged in to find the locations of eight unfamiliar children in different states, but not her own.
In response to inquiries, a T-Mobile spokesperson acknowledged a “temporary system issue” stemming from a “planned technology update.” The company stated the problem was “fully resolved” as of Wednesday and that they are investigating the potential impact on what they described as a “small number of customers,” pledging to contact those affected. T-Mobile apologized for the inconvenience caused.
We’ve seen this kind of data management bug in things such as smart home apps, where it might display the video feeds of cameras inside a house. Still, it says a lot about the data management practices inside the company. Thankfully, it’s now fixed.
