Google to do away with app that lets you contact loved ones during emergency

New Delhi, October 19

Google has announced to discontinue its emergency location-sharing app called Trusted Contacts from December this year and it has already disappeared from Play Store.

Launched three years back, the app allows people to add their trusted friends and family members and seek their help in case of an emergency. The contacts could then request a status update to see if you’re alright and you can respond with your location to reassure them.

If you don’t respond, the app automatically shares the last known location so that they can send for help.

Google notified its users on Sunday via email of the closure of the app.

“More than three years ago, we launched the Trusted Contacts app to help users know where their loved ones are,” the company said in a statement. Since then, this feature has been integrated directly into Google Maps Location Sharing, which makes it even easier to share location in real-time with trusted friends and family.

“For this reason, the Trusted Contacts application disappears today from the App Store and Play Store and will no longer be available as of December 1, 2020. If you have the application installed on your device, you can continue to use it until then,” Google informed.

If you have created trusted contacts, you have time until December 1 to download them from the Trusted Contacts page.

After that date, Trusted Contacts will stop working and your trusted contacts will not be able to see the real-time location that you share with them from the app.

Google Maps still has the real-time location sharing feature but the users have to opt-in to constant tracking, sharing their locations with other people all the time instead of only the loved ones. IANS

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