Trusted Groups
The Trapster® Trusted Groups feature allows local, national, or world-wide organizations to collaborate and create private speed trap sharing communities (or "groups"). Examples of such communities:
* A small group of friends or family members (membership can be as low as two individuals!)
* Several employees from a workplace
* A local auto club
* A national industry organization such as trucking
* Members of a Web forum who have a common interest
Here is how Trusted Groups work:
A user creates a new Trusted Group, and optionally appoints moderators. Other Trapster® users now join this Trusted Group. Each new member of the Trusted Group configures their Text Message Alert and Mobile Application settings as desired. For example, a new member of the Trusted Group can choose to only receive Live Police report text messages if they were reported by another member of a Trusted Group they are subscribed to, receive all Live Police, Red Light Camera, and Speed Camera alerts on their BlackBerry running the Trapster® Mobile application, but only receive Typical Enforcement Point alerts that were reported by another member of a Trusted Group they are subscribed to.
When users subscribe to one or more Trusted Groups, it changes what happens when they report traps. The user can choose whether the traps they report will be visible to all Trapster® users, or visible according to the settings of the trusted groups they subscribe to.
Users can subscribe to multiple Trusted Groups. When a user joins multiple Trusted Groups, the traps that user reports get posted to all Trusted Groups that user is a member of. For example, if user "joeHonda" joins only one Trusted Group "miami trapster", and the group "miami trapster" is configured such that traps posted to the group are only visible to members, and joeHonda has configured his preferences so that traps he reports are visible according to the settings of the groups he has subscribed to, then traps that joeHonda reports will only be visible to members of the group "miami trapster". If however joeHonda later join another Trusted Group "florida drivers", and the settings of the group "florida drivers" allow all Trapster® users to see the traps reported by members of that group, then all traps reported by joeHonda will be visible to all Trapster® users, and of course also members of each of the groups joeHonda has joined. This is because joeHonda has specified that traps he posts should be visible based on the settings of the groups he is subscribed to, and one of those groups makes its traps public.
Any Trapster® user can create a new Trusted Group. That user becomes the owner of that group. Trusted Group names can be either published or unpublished. If published, other Trapster® users can search for that group and request an invitation. This can increase the number of users who ultimately sign up for and participate in that group (which is good!), but also may result in unwanted invitation requests from people the owner does not know. The only ways users can join an unpublished group:
* Group owner or moderator initiates invitation using the Trapster® invitation system
* User learns the name of that group by e-mail or some other means, and requests an invitation
Trusted Groups have only one owner, but may have multiple moderators. Moderators can send invitation requests, appoint other moderators, participate in private message exchanges, accept or remove members of the group, and change group settings. Only the owner can delete the group.