My SO's two eldest (SD14 and SS12) have had cell phones for at least as long as I've known them. Their dad got them when he separated from Cow so they'd be able to communicate regardless of which parent they were with. Cow was supposed to pay for half of the bills, which she has not once done in all the time of having them. The phones are his. 

Some time ago in order to put some screen time limits in place he installed an app on the phones that tracks their screen time (and will shut them down when the limit is reached), appropriate websites (they are actually pretty good in this respect - nothing of concern in content yet), and for safety reasons, the location of the phones. When they're at Cow's the limits are turned off, it's not our time, not our problem, but the location follows them wherever they go with the phones. 

We don't much care outside of raising an eyebrow when she has the 5 year old out swimming until 9:40 p.m. every week the night before parenting time switches (which has a direct effect on our night - an overtired 5 year old is no picnic sometimes), and making sure she gets the kids to school. This is kind of a big deal, because she has no real control over these children, and caves into them if they have a fit. School isn't negotiable for us and letting her golden child (SS12) stay home just because "he's been so GOOD about going!" would not go over well with SO. 

Well, Cow did not like that we knew where they were going, but not because she thought it was invasive, noooooo, but because she couldn't do the same when they were with us. 

She had her lawyer write us a strongly (and poorly!) worded letter of complaint. My SO had his lawyer respond by suggesting they just leave the phones at home when they go out, problem solved, everyone's using their common sense, right? 

NOPE. At the same time she was having her lawyer complain, she went out and got them phones too... My SD14 was LIVID. She loves her phone, horrifically cracked screen and all, and did not take kindly to her mother getting her a phone in a colour she hates, daring to set it up without any input from SD, and a whole bunch of other stuff which resulted in SD14 getting all worked up and calling her own mother a 'psycho'. 

But the really funny part is that Cow isn't tech savvy at ALL. So she has her BFF, and BFF's hubby (allegedly in IT) do all her tech work (for free obvs). 

BFF (or BFF's IT Hubby) misspelled SD's name anywhere a name had to be entered in the phone... eg. the part where it says 'xxx's iphone), it's misspelled. And in more than one place. It would be one thing if it was just a mistake (different variation of the name), but nope, it wound up being a nonsensical word and it was in a bunch of places. SD pointed it out to mother via text (screenshots and all), and mother said BFF said it must be because of something to do with OUR phone and a bunch of other gibberish netiher SD nor my SO could figure out which we laughed at because there is no freaking way it's possible that anything on Cow's phone is coming from ours. But there's no way anyone there is going to say "oops, sorry, my mistake!". 

Cow ALSO copied us (because we are being more responsible and she can't handle that) and had the phones set up to shut down at 9:30 pm. But she shut EVERYTHING down. SD was complaining it was the photo app, google, her text messages... She asked her mother to fix it, and mother couldn't, because BFF hadn't given her the code to bypass the time lock and to make any changes... 

But it gets funnier. These allegedly tech savvy people didn't even put a lock code for the time limits on the 12 year old's phone... so SS12, being smarter than all 3 of them together (Cow, BFF and BFF's IT Hubby) quickly caught this fact and put in his own code. Yeah, good luck with shutting his phone down now, lady.

They were so eager to tell these stories I hadn't even gotten my coat off inside the door before hearing about all this. 

There is one concern I thought of far too late to warn SD about. She transferred all her contact info to her new phone - including mine, and then handed the phone back to mother to take back to BFF's for fixing.... so now Cow has my contact info (yeah, she snooped through SD's contacts - she does not respect boundaries, but that's another post in itself). That bothers me, but not much I can do at this point. No fault of SD's, it didn't occur to her. But Cow is invasive, so I'm sure I will have to be careful how much I say to SD14 (she texts me often, usually to share a funny meme or send a pic of schoolwork she's proud of) or how I say it when I text to mother's phone. I wouldn't put it past her to have SDs messages mirrored to her phone (if she could figure that out).

Cow has decided to either not let our phones go to her house (uh, are you going to come over and physically prevent them from leaving our house on switch days?) and will not let hers come to ours (no problem, if they ever did, they'd immediately be turned off and put in a bin until they left to go back to her place). But that would leave her kids phoneless at school during the swap day. Mother's solution? She might drop the phones off at school. SD14's response? "How will we know, you won't be able to text us!".