We’re staying at an AirBnB right now and got some advice that we should take a video or photo of every room before we leave because unreputable AirBnB renters trash the place after you leave and charge you for it. This doesn’t look like the kind of place where that’s happened, but you never know.
Anyway, the video and/or photos will be timestamped to prove when we took them, but we can’t think of a great way to prove when we actually left other than taking a bunch more photos on the road to prove we really left. While that’s not the worst option, what I’m hoping for is a way to use location services to keep a timestamped record of when we left, where we went, and when we arrived.
Does anyone know of a way to do this with Apple Maps or Google Maps or some other app? Advice would be greatly appreciated.
If it’s necessary information: I have an iPhone 11 and my mother, who I’m staying with, has an iPhone 13 and my mother has an Apple Watch series 7. Yes, she has way too much money. But she’s also paying.
Have your mom start an “Outdoor Walk” in the Workout app on her watch. It records time and location that can be reviewed in the Fitness app on the phone.
Also you’re probably being way over paranoid, but I get it; better safe than sorry.
Perfect! Thank you!
And I’m not the paranoid one, my insane mother is. Anything to placate her.
I’m keen on what you suggested but I don’t quite car catch, how would recording an activity help with photo documentation?
My understanding was they will have photos with timestamps but mom wants to prove they actually left after the photos were taken. So they were looking for a way to tie time to location. So with the combined evidence from the time stamped photos and the time stamped GPS track they could prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that any damage left was not caused by them.
That is correct.
There are obviously big privacy concerns/implications with this and you’ll rarely see someone recommend it on Lemmy, but Google’s Location History/Timeline pretty much does exactly what you’re asking. It’s not perfect (for instance if you’re at a shopping center it might record a different store than where you went) but it will keep track of where you went, when you arrived, when you left, and even try to guess how you got there (car, walking, etc.). You can set it to delete this history after a certain number of months.
Another option would be to use a mileage tracker like someone would use to deduct the use of a vehicle on their taxes, such as MileIQ or Everlance. They’ll record when and where you traveled.
If you’re being really paranoid about someone falsely claiming you trashed a place you might also want to consider a Timestamp Camera. This app has a lot of options but not great documentation so you’ll want to play around with its settings. You can have it put street address, latitude/longitude, even a little map overlay directly on the image. Of course, location data and timestamp are automatically baked into the metadata of your pictures by default, but that metadata could be stripped or modified. Someone could claim your timestamps and data baked into the photos were added later or falsified, but these would certainly make a stronger case. I use this app when doing a side gig delivering food and someone selects “hand it to me” but then messages me to just leave it at their door. I’ll take a picture with this app and send it through the delivery app or text message when I drop the food off so they have a record of when and where it was left. I don’t think people have usually tried to scam me or the service, but I’ve read plenty of stories of people trying that and this at least makes it harder to make a false claim.
I’m 99% certain they wouldn’t scam us, but my mother is paranoid to the extreme.
