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App popular among school children raises parents’ concern over location-tracking function

SINGAPORE — Smartphone application Zenly is gaining in popularity among primary and secondary school students in Singapore, but its ability to allow users to share private details is causing concern to some parents.

Students TODAY spoke to recently said that the main appeal of the smartphone application Zenly is being able to see their friend’s real-time location on a map at any time of the day.

Students TODAY spoke to recently said that the main appeal of the smartphone application Zenly is being able to see their friend’s real-time location on a map at any time of the day.

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SINGAPORE — Smartphone application Zenly is gaining in popularity among primary and secondary school students in Singapore, but its ability to allow users to share private details is causing concern to some parents.

Students TODAY spoke to recently said that the main appeal of the app is being able to see their friend’s real-time location on a map at any time of the day.

“When you want to meet your friends and they haven’t arrived yet, you will know how far away they are,” said 16-year-old James Lee.

The app also automatically displays whether the user’s friends are at home, at work or in school. Users of the app can even see the battery level of their friends’ phones.

“I will be able to tell if my friend has woken up by how fast his battery depletes,” he said.

James told TODAY that Zenly is “quite popular” in his school. About half of his classmates use the app.

Users of the application can message friends, send photos and emojis to each other, and challenge them to explore as much of the city as possible. It also reveals to friends whether users are currently at home, at work or in school. Illustration: Raymond Limantara

Yet, parents have raised concerns that letting others, especially strangers, know their real-time location puts teenagers at risk of kidnapping and sexual abuse.

“Kids do not know how dangerous it can be,” said Ms Angeline Chia Yin Ping, 42, a mother of four. “Why would you want to let strangers know where you are?”

WHAT IS ZENLY?

Before someone can view a user’s location, the user has to first accept a friend request from him or her.

A user’s location is displayed in real-time to friends, even if the user may not have the application open at the time.

Users of the application can message friends, send photos and emojis to each other, and challenge them to explore as much of the city as possible.

It also reveals to friends whether users are currently at home, at work or in school. This is automatically detected based on the user’s location history — spending overnight at the same location will inform the algorithm that that is the user’s home. 

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The France-based company was acquired by Snap Inc, which owns social networking application Snapchat, for US$213.3 million (S$295 million) in 2017.

EASY TO GET TEENAGERS TO ACCEPT REQUESTS

Although concerns parents have with the app are mainly about strangers being able to track their children’s location, students told TODAY that they accept friend requests only from people they know in real life.

“Adding them allows the other person to see my location and I’m not comfortable allowing someone I don’t know (to) see my location,” said James.

To find out if teenage users were, like James, discerning with the friend requests that they accept, I downloaded the application and sent requests to people I know.

Doing so was not difficult, as the app actively looks at a user’s phone contacts and suggests a list of people to add as friends.

After that, I tried to add my friends’ friends, who are people I do not know.

Navigating the colourful interface was also simple. Tapping on the faces of the people on my app revealed a list of their friends, who I can then send requests to.

After a few days of using Zenly, seven people who are not my friends accepted my requests — four were in secondary school and three in primary school.

Through the app, I was able to find out what schools they went to, where they lived, where they hung out after school and the route they took to get home — all without speaking to them.

There is also an option that allows me to call them and when I click on the call button, it displays their phone number.

WHAT TEENAGERS AND PARENTS SAY

Wong Kang Yun, 12, began using Zenly after receiving an invite from his friend, but deleted the app after his brother warned him that it was dangerous to use.

“He said that if a person wanted to kidnap me, he could take my friend’s phone and track where I am,” Kang Yun said.

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Stacey Tan, 15, said: “It’s fun because I can see my friends’ locations, but it’s a little creepy. That’s why sometimes I question myself why I downloaded.”

Madam Wang Ai Ling, 42, said that she would not mind using the application herself, if it means she can track her son’s location.

However, if her 14-year-old son uses Zenly with people other than family members, she would advise him to delete the app because his privacy could be infringed.

On Zenly’s website, its terms and conditions state: “No one under 13 is allowed to create an account or use the services.”

The application’s settings let users set restrictions on the friends they allow their location to be visible to. It also allows users to opt out of being included in the suggested friends list.

For a user who deletes the application on his phone without deactivating his account, the app will no longer track his real-time location and battery level, but his last location is still on the map.

TODAY has reached out to Zenly and Snap Inc for comment.

 

Note: The reporter has reached out to the seven students to inform them that he had added them for the sole purpose of producing this article. The reporter has also deleted them from his friends list on Zenly.

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