Q: Location services

Hey!

The best way to do this would be to create separate apple acounts for each one of your sons and then enable family sharing for them. That way whenever they buy any app from your card you will have to first approve the purchase (but I think this works only if they are minors).

Set up family sharing:  https://support.apple.com/en-in/KM205151?cid=acs::applesearch

if you want to use one id and still get their locations, you will have to use the Find my iPhone app. The app will show locations of each device.

if you are seeing their location from Find Friends or through iMessage app you will see only one location (as you rightly mentioned, because they both have the same apple account).

Pattyk7613 wrote:

 

Hello! I'm a mom of two sons who now use iPhones (5 & 5s). I have them sharing an apple ID/iTunes account which is my email address so I can see what apps they are buying/downloading & to avoid buying 2 of 99.9% of their apps. I also have restrictions set on the phone for their respective ages. My issue is, for location services, I have it so their device shares their location with me. However, it will only share it from one of their devices, not each separate phone. I do believe it's cause of the shared iTunes ID. Am I correct in my theory? What's the best way to fix this?

Thanks for your help!

No, you should be able to see both phones unless they turn off location services. But you should not be sharing an Apple ID with them, because that shares your information with them. Get each their own Apple ID, and connect them to yours with Family Sharing. This lets you set limits on each of them from your "master" account. Purchased apps can be used by all members of a family share plan, calendars can be shared, and Find my iPhone will let you see all of them. You can also set purchase limits and other restrictions if you desire. See: Family Sharing - Apple Support for details on how to set it up.

For family sharing you need to have one master account and then other member accounts linked to it, where all the members can use the card of the master for payment.

what I understand from your response is that you want two create two accounts.

1. Your account and Son A's account will be same
2. Son B's account will be a newly created one.

THis would work for the purpose of preventing duplicate purchases. Be sure that, after enabling Family Sharing, the son B while purchasing goes to AppStore>Updates>purchased>Mother's Name> Search the app he wants. Now he will see the app as free. If he directly searches on the AppStore for the app, he will still see it as not purchased (at least this is how it works for me).

For location, you will have to use find my iPhone as there will be confusion between your location and Son A's location if you are relaying the location from the iMessage app.

How are you looking at the locations of your sons?