I am going on a road trip in a car with USB connectors and Bluetooth. I will listen to an audio book while on the road. To get my listening material ready I learned about, and installed, the program called Android Auto on my cell phone. This program, as I understand it, does these three things, maybe more:
- It will give you directions as you travel, showing a map, to wherever you are going.
- If properly setup, it will allow you to safely talk, hands free, on your cell phone.
- It will let you listen to an audio book using the car’s sound system, interfaced with an audio books application, at the same time it is doing task one.
To give directions, however, you must grant the application permission to use your location.
What I found creepy, however, is the first option. After I got the application installed, it gave me preset directions to places that I have visited, many times: my favorite ski area, the local hardware store, the grocery store. It seems that any place that I visited where I either made a phone call or looked something up using the phone’s Internet browser, Android saved the location. When I installed Android Auto, it grabbed the location data to provide directions to those places.
Besides being a bit creepy, as my own phone is recording points against my knowledge, why would I need or want directions to the places I go to all the time?
But the location feature in a cell phone could be a life saver if it is turned on.
Always call 911 if you are in a dire situation. But If you find yourself lost in the woods, with a cell phone connection, take a photo of your surrounding and text the photo to a friend. The photo will be geotagged with the latitude and longitude of your location. The GPS receivers in modern cell phones seem to have an estimated horizontal accuracy of 30 feet or less, good enough for search and rescue to find you.