Location-Sharing Features Help App Users Keep in Touch With Friends, Family

Continuing its drive to provide monitored security in areas beyond the home, ADT has added location-sharing features and notifications to the mobile safety app it launched about two years ago.

Users of the SoSecure by ADT app can now see where their friends, family and colleagues are on a map, share their own location, receive a notification when someone’s arrived at a designated spot and check in to tell others where they are.

They can do this by inviting others to join a private group within the app; these capabilities are then shared by everyone in a group. For example, if a child’s school is marked as a spot within the map, parents and other guardians will be notified when the child arrives or leaves.

“We’re really proud of the continued iterations on what we’ve done,” ADT Vice President of Emerging Business and Mobile Security Leah Page told PYMNTS. “We’ve been thoughtful about trying to increase the everyday usefulness of the app.”

Keeping in Touch With Friends, Family and Colleagues

Likely use cases for these new features include helping parents keep track of their children, enabling university students to keep in touch with friends, and allowing colleagues to know each other’s location during a business trip.

Separate groups can be created for each purpose, and a group can be deleted at any time — for instance, at the end of a business trip.

The app also shows the state of charge of the battery of everyone’s phone. This solves a problem that’s common with older children — shutting off their phone so they can’t be monitored and later saying that their battery died.

Making It a Part of Daily Life

The new location-sharing features join the app’s existing capabilities that include the ability to contact ADT for reassurance or help when feeling unsafe. Users of the app with the free plan can do this via an SOS slider button or chat. ADT monitoring agents will assess the situation and, if needed, contact 911 with the user’s location and details.

With one of the premium plans that require a monthly subscription, users can add features that include SOS video calls, voice activation with a secret code word, a larger number of spots within the location-sharing feature, roadside assistance and crash detection.

Looking ahead, Page said the roadmap for SoSecure going forward includes adding more of the social aspect to encourage referrals between friends and to increase the daily use of the app.

“With our second big iteration, we really thought about how to make the app more useful, how to get more people to use it on a daily basis, so that it’s not an afterthought when an emergency situation comes up,” Page said.

Providing Monitored Security Beyond the Home

SoSecure is one of the ways in which ADT is extending its professional monitoring services beyond homes and small businesses.

Another is a joint venture with Ford that is developing a solution that will protect both vehicles and cargo from thieves. This is to be launched early next year.

Read more: AI-Powered, Connected, Monitored Service Will Provide Vehicle Security