Is "Find My Friends" ever wrong for a period of time?

[Pastro123]

I was using Find My Friends and for about an hour, it was displaying a location about a half mile away from where my friend said he was. When refreshing, it would move around a bit, but stay close to the same location, with a very small orange circle (about the size of a car in the satellite view of Maps), showing that it should be accurate, saying it was updated "now" or "30s ago". Then, after about an hour, over the course of a few minutes, it made its way back to the expected location.

So...basically, was my husband lying about where he was or was Find My Friends? Is it possible it was just consistently a half mile off course for an hour or do I have a bigger problem?

My phone is an iPhone 5 and his is a 5S.

Thanks!

 

[maflynn]

I found Find My Friends to be inexact and sometimes report a incorrect location, sometimes I noticed this for about 5 to 10 minutes. I can't recall seeing it wrong for an hour but I don't use that app in a way to say its possible or not.

 

[marvz]

Yes, this can happen. I don't think your husband was lying to you
I use Find my Friends often and sometimes it's just some kilometers off. There are some reasons like bad cellular signal or a WLAN is wrong (because iOS is often using WLAN for your geolocation).

Everything's fine

 

[Pastro123]

Well maybe that stupid Find My Friends is making my heart beat faster for no reason at all then! So you think even with my refreshing and FMF's appearance of accuracy, it's totally within the limits of how accurate it can be sometimes?

It was right off the street, like he would have been on a sidewalk or in a parked car, then was always directly on a street as it made its way back to the expected location. But whenever it was moving, it would only update every couple of minutes so I couldn't tell if it was on a normal driving route or normal driving speed back to the location.

Maybe I'm just a crazy lady after all. I hope so!

 

[marvz]

Probably yes

Even if in your FMF app his location is updated and accurate.. because mostly the problem happens while "uploading" his location to iCloud. So iCloud thinks it has the correct location and displays it to you.
And how I said, this happens if your husband's iPhone has bad cellular signals, etc. .. also sometimes iCloud is just lagging

 

[Pastro123]

Thanks

 

[jahall05]

I don't think GPS in itself is always that accurate (which is what find my friends uses). I can be driving along a lake and it will occasionally show me driving into the lake and over the lake.

I wouldn't use this as evidence that he was doing anything wrong, just like the majority of people have suggested here.

 

[Ray Brady]

Find My Friends can absolutely be incorrect for significant stretches of time. I often use it to gauge when my wife is going to be getting home, so that I know when to get dinner started. There have been many times when FMF has showed her at a point on her route some 50 miles away for well over half an hour. Then it will suddenly jump to show her just 5 miles away.

I'm confident your husband was exactly where he said he was. I'm also confident that the judgmental busybodies who want to condemn you for the way you use your phone need to get a grip.

 

[KeepCalmPeople]

For me, FMF has been wrong more often than it has been right. Sometimes it can take an hour for it to update to the current location. I think there are many factors that affect its accuracy, including the target's GPS location accuracy, data connection strength and consistency, and (if any) speed of movement.