Frequently Asked Questions

iPhone® Support

a. How does Moby work?

Moby uses the existing GPS capabilities of your iPhone to share and display your location in real time to family and friends who are Moby subscribers, and via email or SMS to those who are not using the Moby application.

b. What do I need to run Moby?

To use Moby for iPhone, you will require an iPhone model 3GS or later, running OS 4.1 or higher.

c. How frequently are location points updated?

With ‘Location Sharing’ on, Moby will update your location every 20 seconds throughout your location sharing session.

d. Can I use Moby with Location Services disabled?

Be aware that Moby requires Location Services on your iPhone to be active in order to share your location with others.

When you run Moby with Location Services disabled, you will be able to receive location points from those sharing with you. If you wish to share your location, please ensure ‘Location Services’ are ‘On’ in the iPhone settings.

e. Can I use Moby with no network connection?

Moby will not function when you are using your iPhone in Airplane Mode, when you are out of coverage, or when wireless data is disabled. If Moby is not functioning properly, please check to make sure that iPhone Airplane mode is disabled, and that you have either 3G or WiFi services.

f. How does Moby protect my privacy?

Moby gives you complete control over with whom and when you share your location. To ensure your location is never visible to any third parties, Moby will never share your location via social networking sites and always obfuscates map links sent via email or SMS. We here at Moby take privacy concerns very seriously. If you or anyone you know is a victim of stalking or cyberstalking, please contact your local authorities or visit the Stalking Resource Center at http://www.ncvc.org/src/Main.aspx

g. Moby is draining my battery. How do I fix this?

When in use, Moby uses your iPhone’s GPS capabilities to update and transmit your location, which can cause battery drain. Even when not sharing location, Moby is in communication with our servers to update your friend’s location points. We advise shutting down Moby or disabling ‘Location Services’ when Moby is not in use to preserve battery life. To stop Moby completely press the ‘Home’ key to return to the home screen on your iPhone, double tap the ‘Home’ key to bring up a list of running applications, press and hold the Moby application icon until the red ‘x’ appears, and press the red ‘x’ to close the application.

Note that if Moby is closed, you will still receive location sharing requests from family or friends via Push notifications.

h. Why can’t my friend see my location points on the Moby Application?

• Are they using Moby for iPhone?
Once your friend is using the Moby iPhone app, make sure that you have imported your friend to Moby using the same phone number and email address they used when they registered for Moby. If your friend registered for Moby using a different phone number or email address than you identified when you imported them, you won’t see their points on the map. If your friend is unable to see you, please ensure they have imported you using the same phone number and email address you used to register for Moby as well.

• Has their map zoomed or panned to the point where you can’t be seen?
If you have initiated location sharing, the map can automatically be adjusted to show all friends by using the ‘Zoom to All’ feature (available on the bottom left side of the map view). Alternately, the map view can be adjusted by pinching or unpinching (zoom in and zoom out, respectively) or panned by swiping your finger across the screen in the direction you wish to pan.

• Do you have location sharing initiated?
If location sharing is enabled, the ‘Location Share’ button at the top center of the map view will be set to ‘ON’ and the bars and buttons along the top and bottom of the map will be teal colored. When location sharing is off, the bars and buttons will appear grey.

• Do you have a network connection?
If you are connected to either WiFi or your cellular network the appropriate icon will appear in the status bar to indicate the connection type. You can also confirm this by accessing the ‘Settings’ menu on your iPhone.

• Are location services enabled for Moby and the iPhone?
You can see if location services are enabled for your iPhone by accessing the ‘Settings’ menu, choosing ‘General’ and viewing ‘Location Services’. If the ‘Location Services’ slider and the slider for the Moby application are both set to ‘Yes’ then location services are enabled.

i. What if my friend doesn’t have an iPhone? Can I still share my location?

Yes. You can share your location to your friends and family via SMS and Email. When you initiate location sharing with a someone who is not using the Moby app on their iPhone, they will receive a secure link on their smartphone or computer which will take them to a private map showing your 10 most recent locations. The map will automatically update every 2 minutes until you stop sharing location.

j. I’ve stopped sharing my location but I can still friends’ points on the map. Why?

Even if you stop sharing your location with your friends, you will continue to see their points on the map as long as they are sharing with you.

k. What is the difference between Moby for iPhone and Moby for BlackBerry?

Moby for iPhone represents the next generation of Moby and incorporates more of our vision of a safe, secure location-sharing network. Moby for BlackBerry, while including many of the same features, does not include the real-time location sharing interface (although subscribers are still able to send alerts and share location via the non-iPhone interface). In the near future Moby will encompass all handsets and operating systems for a seamless cross-platform location sharing experience.

Known iPhone Issues

a. Contact

• When importing your iPhone contacts, the photo you have selected in your contact list is also imported for their Moby avatar. If the photo for the contact is changed, the avatar will not update automatically; to update the avatar you will need to remove the contact and add again.

• When importing an iPhone contact with a picture that you have cropped or altered, the original uncropped picture will be imported into your Moby contact list.

• There is an 18 character limit on email addresses for Moby contacts. If the email address for your contact is over 18 characters, the address will not be properly visible and you will be unable to select the address for notifications.

• When you designate a friend as a default Alert recipient, that state is remembered when you import another friend and the ‘default Alert recipient’ status will be set to ‘On’.

• If you import a new friend with the same phone number or email as an existing subscriber, you will be unable to save the new friend record

b. Mapview

• ‘Street view’ is currently the only option available for the Moby map. ‘Satellite’ and ‘Hybrid’ support will be added in a future release.

• An avatar in an alert state may be hidden behind the avatars of other friends in the same area. In future releases, an alert avatar will remain on top until the alert state has passed.

• Periodically, when a friend’s state changes between ‘Alert’ (red), ‘Normal’ (blue) and ‘Stale’ (gray), the avatar may momentarily disappear from the map while it refreshes.

• There is currently no way to cancel an alert once it has been generated. Alerts will expire after 10 minutes, at which point the subscriber will be returned to their normal state.