SpotWalla - Family & Friends

Family & Friends

SpotWalla's Family & Friends functionality allows you to share your last known location with other SpotWalla users and to view, on a single map, the last location of SpotWalla users who want to share their location with you. SpotWalla users who share their location with you and those with whom you share your location are your friends. Your family is composed of all the devices in your account.

You control the family members that appear in the family viewer as well as each member's display name. The display name is the text that appears on the icon marking the last location. You also control the display name of all your friends. At any time and for any reason, you may break up a friend relationship.

At no time for any reason will SpotWalla make friends for you. You are in complete control of the friends you make. SpotWalla allows you to search for friends by first or last name, but the search is restricted to only those SpotWalla users who've elected to share their name with others. Sharing your name is not compulsory to using Family & Friends, though. Each user has a unique URL which can be shared privately with your friends and used to establish a friendship in SpotWalla.

Friendships are created in two steps. First, a request for friendship is made. Second, that request must be confirmed. So just because someone wants to be friends with you, the friendship isn't complete until you confirm the friendship request. Of course, you're under no obligation to confirm the request. You can choose to ignore any friend request.

Also, friendship requests can only be made by SpotWalla users who have at least one device with messages. Users who don't meet this criteria can still confirm friend requests, but they cannot initiate them.

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Security

You should never request or confirm a relationship with someone in whom you don't have complete trust. SpotWalla's Family & Friends could also be called Family & Damn Good Friends. Here's why... When you share your location with a friend, they see your last location regardless of the type of message sent and regardless if the location falls within an active secure zone. Again, only request and confirm friendships from those in whom you have complete trust.

Here are some other things to note about security:

All Family & Friends functionality requires the user to be logged in.
If you decide to share your name with other SpotWalla users, you expose your first, last and user names to them. Sharing your name allows users to easily find you and make a friend request. By default this option is disabled for all users. You may enable/disable this option in your Account Preferences.
If you initiate a friend request, that person will know your first and last names.
When confirming a friendship request, you're under no obligation to share your location with the person making the request.
The family viewer only works when the user is logged in.
There is no way to share your family viewer with others.

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The Family Page

To access the Family & Friends page, log into SpotWalla and click the Family link in the upper right menu. At the top of the page is the family menu bar. Clicking a button in the menu bar accesses that particular page. The following sections describe each button/page.

My Family

This page displays all your family members. Remember, your family is composed of all the devices in your account.

You can change the Display Name of each family member and show or hide each family member in the family viewer. To change the name displayed, simply update the value in the Display Name column. The text is limited to 6 characters. To show or hide the family member, check or uncheck the checkbox respectively. After making any updates to this data, click the Update button to save the changes.

My Friends

This page displays all of your friends. Your friends are other SpotWalla users who've elected to share their location with you.

You can change the Display Name of each family member and show or hide each family member in the family viewer. To change the name displayed, simply update the value in the Display Name column. The text is limited to 6 characters. After making any updates to this data, click the Update button to save the changes.

At any time and for any reason you may break up with a friend. Breaking a friendship removes all relationships associated with the original friend request. To break up with a friend, simply click the appropriate Break Up link.

My Devices

This page shows you everyone with whom you're sharing your location. This is different than the My Friends page because it displays one-way friendships. A one-way friendship occurs when you send a friendship request to someone, they confirm it and choose to not share their location with you. SpotWalla allows this behavior for a number of reasons, but mainly because it allows someone with multiple devices to share their location with someone else who has fewer devices.

This can't be stressed enough, though... Only send friend requests to those in whom you have complete trust.

Find Friends

From this page you can search for friends by first or last name. Because privacy is paramount in SpotWalla, the search is limited to only those SpotWalla users who have elected to share their name information with other SpotWalla users. More information on this option may be found in the help section: Account Preferences.

To search for friends, enter one or more first or last names in the search box and click the Search button. The search results are listed in a table. Each person has an associated Request link. To make a friend request, click the appropriate Request link.

Friend Requests

This page shows you all of the friend requests others have sent you and that you've yet to confirm or ignore. The number in parentheses on the button in the menu bar indicates the number of unconfirmed friends requests you have. The page also shows you all the unconfirmed friendship requests that you've made.

To confirm a request, simply click its Confirm link and follow the directions.

To remove an unconfirmed friend request that you've made, click the appropriate Remove link.

Family Viewer

Clicking this link displays the family viewer. The last location of all your family and friends appear on the map. Each icon is color-coded to indicate the type of message sent - Ok, Help, Tracking and Custom. Each icon also includes the Display Name you configured for each family member and friend. Clicking an icon displays detailed information about the location.

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Requests & Confirmations

Establishing a friendship is a two-step process - Request and Confirmation.

Requests

When searching for friends, clicking the Request link initiates a friend request. On the next page you must select which device to use to share your location with the person. If you only have a single device in your account, that device will be chosen automatically. If you have multiple devices, you will need to select the device from a list.

Once you've selected the device, click the Send button. SpotWalla sends the user a notification email. And that's the end of the request process.

You may view all of the unconfirmed friend requests you've sent to other users on the Friend Requests page.

Confirmations

The Friend Requests page displays the friend requests sent to you that you've yet to confirm or ignore. Clicking the Confirm link takes you to the confirmation page. You can choose to share your location with the person who made the friend request, but you're under no obligation to do so. You're given the option of selecting one of your devices or not sharing your location. Clicking the Confirm button adds the requestor's device to your friends list and, if you chose to share your location with the requestor, your device is added to his/her friends list.

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