Parents go to extreme lengths to protect their children, and that makes random technical glitches that put those children at risk all the more terrifying. Yesterday, T-Mobile’s SyncUP Kids tracking service experienced an error that revealed the location of multiple children to individuals that were not their parents.
Parents can buy a small GPS tracker and use it with their T-Mobile plan. It’s ideal for parents who aren’t ready to give their child a phone, but who want to be able to track their location when they’re away from home. One parent spoke to 404Media regarding the glitch and said that she could not see her own children, she could see the locations of numerous other children across the country.
“As a mother, this is super alarming to me, and I raised flags right away [with T-Mobile] and nobody took me seriously there,” Jenna (name changed for privacy) said. “I was probably shown more than eight children. I would log in and I couldn’t see my children but I could see a kid in California. I refreshed and then I had no trackers, and then I refreshed again and would see a different child.”
In addition to SyncUp Kids, T-Mobile has another device called the SyncUp Drive that was also affected. Users reported the ability to see vehicles that were not their own. Upon refreshing the service, another vehicle would appear.
T-Mobile had previously announced that older SyncUp devices could lose functionality and features as the company moves to sunset legacy devices, and this recent fiasco has many customers wondering if the two events are related. The privacy violations are staggering, and while it doesn’t appear that anyone could force the system to show a specific person, the idea that it might be possible — and that personal user locations aren’t secure — has raised concern among customers.
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