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family safety guide

Too Many Arrival Pings Train Everyone to Ignore the Real One

Sam OkonkwoSam Okonkwo· Security Researcher· Updated June 8, 2024· 10 min read

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Quick take

Places alerts are useful when they are rare. Hey Polo currently does arrival / geofence style notifications for families. Use two or three places, not twenty. GUIDEORA does not parent by push notification.

Notifications have a budget

Your brain budgets attention. Twenty geofences bankrupt it. Then the one that mattered was swipe-away number fourteen.

This is the same disease as driving-speed alerts on every block. Another article on this site says those are not parenting. This one says fences are not a personality.

From the record

If you would not wake for it at 1 a.m., it should not ping at 4 p.m. either.

GUIDEORA rule for geofences

A short list

Home. School. Maybe a practice field. Not the mall, the gym, and four coffee shops. Recipients should be people who must act, not the group chat.

A parent silencing a flood of geofence notifications
If everything is an arrival, nothing is.

Few fences

The point

Grocery

Usually noise

School

Maybe

Silence

Failure

  • A fence is not consent to live-track all day.
  • Kids who feel spied will leave the phone at a friend's.
  • Battery savers kill radios and create false 'left' pings.
  • 911 is still 911. An app ping is not.

Hey Polo as a quiet radio

Hey Polo currently markets location sharing and place alerts. The product is only as good as the quiet you configure. Confirm live how many places you can set and who receives them.

If the plan nags you to add more places, that is engagement. You can refuse.

Pros

  • +A few fences still earn a school-lane job
  • +Quiet alerts get read
  • +Hey Polo currently treats places as a feature you can limit

Cons

  • −Default culture is more pings
  • −False exits from GPS bounce
  • −Silenced apps help no one

Delete until it would wake you

Keep two fences. Hey Polo is the alert example. GUIDEORA does not ping your grocery store.

Editor take

Rarity is the feature

Too many geofences train ignore. Hey Polo is the family-alert example. Configure fewer. Confirm live.

See Hey Polo