Trusted Contacts has an interesting story shared by both Facebook,—now Meta—and Google.
In 2013, Facebook (Meta) opened “Trusted Contacts” publicly, renaming it from a closed-beta “Trusted Friends.”
The Facebook version of “Trusted Contacts” is as follows:
- Choose people you trust, like friends you’d give a spare key to your house.
- Choose people you can reach without using Facebook, ideally over the phone or in person, since you’ll need to contact them when you can’t log in.
The feature was popular and many of us used it, but now Facebook (Meta) is retiring Trusted Contacts:
Trusted contacts is going away soon. This means your chosen friends will no longer be able to help you get back on Facebook if you lose access to your account. Make sure your email address and phone number are up to date in your account settings. You can also learn more about tips on how to keep your account secure. If you haven’t previously chosen friends as trusted contacts, you won’t be able to use this feature to get back into your account.
And that’s the end of Facebook (Meta) Trusted Contacts, but who owns the matching domain name, TrustedContacts.com?
Apparently, that’s Google and its now retired app, Google Trusted Contacts. Launched in 2016, the app allowed you to tell your loved ones that you’re safe during times of emergency. Four years later, in 2020, Google retired Trusted Contacts via a message and a short notice:
“We launched the Trusted Contacts app as a way to help people stay up to date with their loved ones’ whereabouts,” the message said. “Since then, we’ve built this functionality directly into Google Maps with Location Sharing—making it even easier to share your live location with trusted friends and family.”
Google acquired the domain TrustedContacts.com from HugeDomains; at the time, TrustedContacts.com was listed with a very low asking price: $1,295 dollars.
Now, that’s a steal!
It’s amazing that multi-billion dollar companies can still get good deals for their new brands! 😀
