The new Snap Maps feature on SnapChat is now able to track a user’s exact location. 

With this new feature being able to track any users exact location, it has police concerned about how it could be used.  

“In our mind some of the biggest risks, or the biggest risk, would be someone that could compromise our health or our safety somebody who we haven’t really given a lot of thought to approving,” State College Police Capt. Chris Fishel said. 

Depending on how settings are set up, users can see other users by a glowing blue dot — even if a person is not friends with them.

The best way to protect your location is through Ghost Mode. 

While the app still tracks your location, it doesn’t display it for everyone to see. 

In the meantime, there are some extra safety steps parents and kids can take.

“Work as a team, make sure that…we are checking who we’re friending. So that we have a real good idea who’s going to be tracking us. And if we get to the situation where maybe you know a friendship is falling, along the way or something then use that ghost mode or unfriend the person in the best way you possibly can,” Fishel said.  

A user can turn off the location tracking all together by the following steps:

1.) Go into settings

2.) Scroll down to SnapChat

3.) Select location

4.) Choose never. 

With this new technology hitting the app story, it does have parents concerned. 

“I think it takes away the privacy. Uh, it’s a little concerning that a young person like my daughter here who doesn’t even know that it exists, that she might be targeted by somebody who does know that it exists,” parent Mersini Keller. 

Police say snap chat is still the fun social media app it was before but are just urging parents and kids to use a little more caution.