NEED TO KNOW
- A 27-year-old woman noticed her phone battery was draining faster than usual
- While assessing the settings on her phone, she noticed a location-sharing profile tied to her stepfather’s email
- After confronting him, she was shocked by his response and her mother’s defense
Privacy is something most adults expect, but sometimes, even well-meaning actions from family can cross the line.
A 27-year-old woman living independently found herself questioning where that line is after discovering her stepfather had been secretly tracking her phone location.
According to a recent Reddit post, things began unraveling when she noticed her phone battery draining unusually fast.
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After digging into her settings, she found a location-sharing profile tied to her stepfather’s email through the family-sharing feature.
“It showed my last ten trips including the nights I stayed at my boyfriend’s place,” she wrote. “I never agreed to this.”
Shocked and deeply uncomfortable, she confronted her stepfather during Sunday dinner, asking him why he added her phone number without permission.
According to him, “It was a safety plan for his ‘girls’ and that if I was not hiding anything it should not matter.”
Her mother also supported him, brushing off the violation of privacy and calling her “ungrateful after everything he has done for us.”
Despite the family’s defense of what they framed as concern, the poster felt “sick,” especially given that she is financially independent, doesn’t live at home and was never informed or asked to participate in any kind of tracking.
In response, she took action: “I removed the profile, changed my passwords, and I told them I will not visit until he apologizes and deletes anything else tied to my accounts.”
Rather than understanding her perspective, her decision was met with backlash. The family group chat called her “dramatic” and accused her of scaring her 14-year-old sister by “making a scene.”
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Now, she’s stuck between feeling violated and guilty. And with the holidays approaching, she is wondering whether to “go low contact until they respect my privacy.”
Commenters rushed to reassure the original poster that she was not “overreacting” and that her feelings were valid.
One user wrote: “I’m a stepmom to a young adult and I cannot imagine doing something like that.”
Another suggested she “check any other devices etc and ensure he’s cut off,” adding that they thought the stepfather was acting “creepy and controlling.”
