Constant tracking has never made anyone feel closer

Constant location sharing became normal without anyone really stopping to question it. You switch it on "for safety", often within the family, then keep a distracted eye on a blue dot that moves around through the day. But deep down, what does it actually give you?

Knowing that someone is home at 9pm does not bring you any closer to them. It informs you, sometimes it reassures you, but most of the time it sets up a low background surveillance nobody explicitly asked for. Real presence is crossing paths with people and talking to them, not following their route on a screen.

There is a hidden cost above all, and it is not theoretical. In 2021, an investigation by the American outlet The Markup revealed that Life360, the "family safety" app used by tens of millions of households, was selling its users' precise location, children included, to around a dozen data brokers. That location data then ended up resold on a market no one controls. The app meant to protect families had become one of the largest sources of location data in the country.

This was not an isolated accident, it was the logical outcome of a business model. An app that knows your location second by second knows your workplace, your doctor's address, your evening habits, the place where you sleep. That data sits somewhere on a server, and data that exists always ends up serving a purpose other than helping you: ad targeting, resale, a leak, or a legal request.

The worst part is that this market does not even deliver the service it promised. You do not feel closer to your friends because you can check where they are. You just feel a little more watched, and a little more inclined to watch them back. Trust slowly gets replaced by verification.

Parages rejects this market entirely. The only piece of information that matters to us is "you are near a friend, right now". Not yesterday, not all the time, not on a map. Just that precise instant when a meeting becomes possible again.

In practice, we made sure we never receive your location at all. The calculation stays on your phone, and nothing travels back to us. This is not a privacy policy we could quietly change one day to make money, it is the way the app is built. We cannot sell what we never had.

There is one more angle that gets far too little attention. Domestic-abuse advocates have warned for years about constant location sharing, which has become a tool of control in toxic relationships. A setting presented as proof of love can quickly turn into a leash. An app that never knows your location continuously simply removes that possibility outright. We would rather have a tool that cannot be misused than a tool you have to keep watching to make sure it stays healthy.

You can find your friends again without giving up your privacy. For years, people were led to believe the opposite because it was more profitable. Parages is our way of proving that it was never true.