Sick of running into your ex? Brian Moore was, so he developed Cloak, an app that warns you when other people are nearby.
There is no shortage of social media apps out there that will loudly broadcast to everyone where you are at every second of the day. Rarer is the app that exists to obfuscate you. This, though, is the goal of Cloak, a new app that wants to keep other people from being able to find you.
Characterizing itself as an "anti-social network," Cloak came about after programmer Brian Moore moved to New York and just kept on stumbling into his ex-girlfriend. In fact, Moore ran into his former inamorata four times in six months, a number he thought defied probability in the 300-square-mile metropolis. It was awkward.
Talking it over with his friend and former Buzzfeed creative director Chris Baker, Moore decided to create an app that could connect to Foursquare and Instagram and scan the locations of friends and acquaintances, compare that to a user's GPS location, and put up an invisible geofence around them. If someone you know on Foursquare or Instagram checks into a location within a customizable distance of your location (from miles to mere blocks), Cloak will send you an alert to duck or cover.
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