We've all experienced that awkward moment when you're out in public and unexpectedly see an ex, enemy, "frenemy" or anyone else you'd want to avoid. There are few worse feelings than running into an ex when you're unprepared or seeing one of your nemeses out at the bar when you don't have friends to back you up.
There is an app that can help you avoid these unwanted encounters, called Cloak. Cloak uses the slogan, "Incognito mode for real life," and their goal is to prevent you from seeing anyone you don't feel like seeing.
They describe it as an antisocial network. Cloak uses your Instagram and Foursquare accounts to provide location data for the people you know. After you log in, you can go to the people section, where it will show you the top people from Foursquare and Instagram who have posted photos or checked in recently. The next category lists people under "far enough" that may not be as much of a threat because they are farther away.
Next to the person's name, it tells you how many miles or even feet they are away from you. When you click on their name, you can either view their location on a map, or flag them.
Once you flag someone, you can set it up to send you notifications whenever they are nearby. You can change the alert distance to within a block, half of a mile, one mile, or two miles, but you can still look at people on the map who are farther away.
You can look at the map in a world view to see where your "frenemies" and exes are spread out, or zoom in if you want to avoid a more specific area.
This app could also be useful if you're taking a fake sick day from work or school and want to avoid nosey coworkers or teachers who could blow your cover.
Cloak will be adding more social networks and features to the app in the future. They are working to find a way to use Facebook while still having the freshest and most relevant data possible.
Cloak doesn't use Twitter because the location data is harder to work with.
One problem could be that if you really don't like someone, you are probably not going to want to follow them on Instagram, and have their pictures showing up in your feed every day. On their App Store description, Cloak creators posted about the "hate follow." "Learn to love the Hate Follow," the description says. "Use Foursquare or make a dummy Instagram account to follow people you don't want in your actual feed."
So, if you want to know where someone is but not quite enough to follow them on social media, the fake account could be a solution, albeit a semi-creepy one. Avoid surprise encounters with Cloak, but also know that if you are using Cloak to find your enemies, it is possible that they may be doing the same to you.
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