Post #3462666

2026-06-29 03:43 UTC

Any recommendations on an encrypted location-sharing app for smartphone? I'm looking for an app appropriate for someone to track the smartphone of a child or an adult in cognitive decline (with their consent!) but that doesn't leak geolocation info to the app provider and their 3672 closest vendors. So far I've found Paralino, which promises that it is e2e encrypted, but I haven't found an audit or anything. Has this one been audited? Recommendations for alternatives?

Replies (1)

@varx@infosec.exchange 2026-07-03 00:07

Looks like Grid (https://mygrid.app/) is a pretty good candidate for a privacy-respecting location sharing app. Claims E2E-encryption, open source, minimal data collection (passkeys rather than email signin, own tileset rather than Google), de-Googled-compatible. Has a reasonable free tier. There are also some other "soft" signs of trustworthiness: Donation page, communicative devs. The encryption is via Matrix. (They let you specify your own homeserver, which sounds neat?) I'm pretty fed up with Matrix from both self-hosting and user perspectives, there are problems with the protocol and how it is managed, etc... but *how* Grid uses Matrix is probably more important than any of that. Might look into the details. I'm not set up for an audit of a phone app but at a glance this does look more promising than others!

Open ##3545602