Cloak app helps you avoid exes, co-workers, and even friends

Have you ever had an awkward run-in with an ex at the grocery store? Or maybe you just don’t want to see anyone today – you just need some alone time.

A new app for your iPhone can give that to you by tracking your friends’ whereabouts and alerting you when they get close.

“My co-founder Brian kept bumping into his ex-girlfriend here in New York City,” said Chris Baker. That’s how the app “Cloak” was born.

To use the app, you login with your Instagram and your Foursquare profile (Facebook and Twitter will be added soon) and you’re given a radar-like, dashboard map view of where all your friends are, based on their latest posts.

It works because many of us have a GPS locator tracking where we Tweet, where photos were taken on our Instagram feed and Foursquare is an app designed solely to tell people where you are.

So, say you’re heading down to your local pub. Just make a quick check of your Cloak app and you’ll see if anyone you know is there.

Or, if you’re feeling particularly anti-social, you can set it up so Cloak alerts you when anyone on your “avoid” list is within two miles of you.

It sounded weird to me, that an app would be born out of a grown man’s inability to confront the reality that his ex still exists and that he might run into her. I asked Baker, shouldn’t his friend just deal with it?

He laughed, “Sometimes you just want to go to the grocery store without putting on makeup. Sometimes you just got a nose job and you need three weeks on your own. Think about Flappy Bird, or Google Glass, or a book even. Those are inherently anti-social because you’re just sitting their tapping a screen, playing flappy bird or you’re ignoring everyone around you reading a book. If someone wants a night of privacy, Cloak is for you.”

Cloak is free – and available for the iPhone now.

If you don’t want your location tracked, you can simply turn that feature off under “settings.”