Don’t worry, I made Snap Map safe
A couple weeks ago, Snapchat added a new feature called Snap Map. It allows you to view snaps of events, celebrations, breaking news, etc from all across the world.
Snapchat state that this feature will allow users to meet up with their friends more easily. The problem with this is that many are not aware that it broadcasts their current location to their mutual friends, every time they open the app. Therefore, adding a new friend on Snapchat can be a big safety risk.
Congratulations Snapchat, you just created the world’s greatest stalking application!
Users can avoid being displayed on the map by enabling ‘Ghost Mode’. However, for the more privacy-conscious, this forces a user to enable and disable this feature multiple times a day. I believe that this detracts from the user experience.
A solution to this problem is a new setting that creates a ‘fence’ around your a location of your choosing i.e your house (similar to Snapchat’s custom Geofilters). This would be called a Safe Zone and would be easy to extend into Snap Map settings. Meaning whenever you open Snapchat within your chosen Safe Zone, you do not appear on the Snap Map.
I have designed two mockup screens on how my Safe Zone feature would be implemented within Snap Map settings:
- You can search the address for your house or if you are currently inside your house, you can tap on the my location button.
- Drag the points of your fence to change its shape, and pinch your fingers in and out to change its size.
Of course, it’s hard to create something that both shares your current location and has the safety of its users in mind. But Snapchat should have taken the privacy of their users more seriously before automatically updating the app with this feature.
