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Tile Buyer Life360 Selling Precise Location Data on Millions of Users [Updated]
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We should probably all pay more attention to these…
A shame it doesn’t tell us how many third-parties the data is being sold to.
A shame it doesn’t tell us how many third-parties the data is being sold to.
And now Tile trackers. That's why they bought Tile.
Their ethics are different, but they're both selling hardware with free software.
I think stupid people deserve stupid services. The only company at the moment I trust with tracking my data is Apple. Simply because they have so much to loose with a blunder close to this one … even if by accident. Even then I really try to understand how they do it … and still have some doubts.
I mean, facilitating location data, even if individual information is not provided … it dos not take much brains to correlate to the individual. Just identify his / she home (location and owner) and the rest comes … easily … when is home , when is not, when is in the office, what time kids go to school. Oh, health data … so cool.
I mean, facilitating location data, even if individual information is not provided … it dos not take much brains to correlate to the individual. Just identify his / she home (location and owner) and the rest comes … easily … when is home , when is not, when is in the office, what time kids go to school. Oh, health data … so cool.
I was using Life360 a few years ago and I can tell you this… their live tracking is much more reliable than Apple’s Find My version lol. We’re in December and still not working properly and it was a headlining feature for iOS 15.
No, this doesn’t mean I’m going back to Life360 but sheesh I wish Apple would fix their version of it.
No, this doesn’t mean I’m going back to Life360 but sheesh I wish Apple would fix their version of it.
I’m not really sure why this is news. It’s pretty clearly stated in their TOS and on the apple store what they are gathering and for what purposes. I suppose the surprising thing is if they aren’t doing anything to prevent individual tracking. That would / should be an issue.
There’s no ‘if’ on that deal as far as I can see. I’m chopping mine in today
They'll have to use AirTags to find all of the customers they'll lose!
Location tracking service Life360 has been selling the precise location data of tens of millions of its users, according to a new report shared by The Markup.
Life360 bills itself as a "family safety platform" app that is meant to allow family members to keep tabs on one another with tracking software that's installed on smartphones, and there are both Android and iPhone apps.
The software is used by 33 million people around the world, and apparently, Life360 is selling location data from both children and adults to a dozen data brokers that then provide the data to other third parties. Two former Life360 employees said that Life360 is one of the largest sources of data in the industry, expressing concern for how the data is used and the lack of safeguards to prevent misuse.
The employees said that Life360 does not take precautions to ensure that location histories cannot be traced back to individuals. The most obvious user identifying information is removed, but Life360 does not aggregate data or reduce precision to preserve privacy.
Life360 CEO Chris Hulls told The Markup that data is an "important part of the business model" that allows Life360's core services to be offered for free.An engineer who worked for X-Mode, a location data provider, said that the raw location data received from Life360 was one of its "most valuable offerings" because of the "sheer volume and precision of the data." Life360 has sold data to X-Mode, Cuebiq, Arity, Safegraph, and others that provide location data to other services. Life360 discloses some of the data sharing in its privacy policy, but there are companies that it does not list.Some of the data providers only use aggregated location information sourced from Life360. Cuebiq, for example, users aggregated data to track COVID-19 "mobility trends" with the CDC. X-Mode has provided the Life360 data to the U.S. Department of Defense, and SafeGraph has also provided it to the CDC.
Life360 does make it clear in the fine print of its privacy policy that data is sold, but people may not be aware of how the data is distributed after it's provided to data brokers. "Families probably would not like the slogan, 'You can watch where your kids are, and so can anyone who buys this information,'" Duke Tech Policy Lab fellow Justin Sherman told The Markup. There is also an opt-out feature, but not all users may be aware of it.
Life360 is an app that's primarily used by parents to track their children and teenagers, and it has raised privacy concerns for its invasiveness. Life360 has said that it does not share the location data of users under 13, but data from children over 13 and adults is fair game.
Tile, a company that makes Bluetooth-based trackers that compete with Apple's AirTags, is being acquired by Life360 in a deal that's worth $205 million. Life360 says that Tile will allow it to provide an "all-encompassing solution" for locating pets, people, and things with the Tile purchase, a claim that is alarming given the privacy concerns raised in today's report.
More information on Life360's user tracking and how the data is used can be found in The Markup's full report.
Article Link: Tile Buyer Life360 Selling Precise Location Data on Millions of Users
Lol!
Brilliant and Evil ways to make a buck, I guess.
Still seems like this is confounding two different issues. Life360 just bought Tile, so anything Life360 has been doing (the subject of this article) is not really able to be generalized at this point to Tile (which seems to be the subject of this post). Further, while Tile isn't super-expensive, it's hardly close to free and isn't too different in price from similar products in the market I'm aware of (AirTags, Trackr, etc.), though they have several different form factors of differing price.
To be clear, I'm not saying this looks good or bodes well for the future. Just trying to get the past (and present, really) clear.
Free? It's only 4 bucks cheaper than a single AirTag and the same price if you buy 4 AirTags.
The only problem with AirTags is that Android users don't know if they're being tracked. Even though my family and I don't use Android, it is essential that Apple fix that ASAP.
The only problem with AirTags is that Android users don't know if they're being tracked. Even though my family and I don't use Android, it is essential that Apple fix that ASAP.
Tile's quote from their complaint against Apple back in April 2021.
They forgot to elaborate that the lost and misplaced things they were helping find was their users personal data ?
They forgot to elaborate that the lost and misplaced things they were helping find was their users personal data ?
This isn’t news for me. When my family wanted to start using life360 a couple years ago I read the privacy policy. I proceeded to veto it’s presence on any of our phones and showed everyone how to use find my.
Jesus dude, look in the app store. Life360, the app, is free. The service, is free. With them selling the data, you literally are the product. That's not mindlessly parroting something, it's a fact.
The Life360 company is buying Tile, a company that sold (for money) a physical product to track things. This article has literally zero to do with Tile at this point (other than that Tile is in the process of being acquired by Life360), because the deal doesn't close until next year, Q1. So anything said in this article about "free" or "data" pertains to Life360 only.
I agree with what you said, and that’s a good point about android devices not knowing they’re being tracked. But how do you propose Apple somehow Cross-alerts an android user that they’re being tracked by AirTags? That means Apple would have to co-develop with android with their software I would assume.
Find My is free too. Am I Apple’s product? No, so that pseudo-intellectual point that people love to drag out doesn’t hold up.
Note that nowhere have I defended Life360. I don’t know much about the company, I don’t use them. All I’m saying it that this stupid generalisation is stupid, whether it applies in this case or not.
The basic Life360 tracking service seems to be free. There are paid options from $4.99 and up.
Life360’s privacy policy is hair raising. They seem to share the user location data with Cuebig which then can share this data with their partners. IMHO no one should touch this with a ten foot pole let alone install this on a personal device.
After their Tile acquisition one can only assume they will monetise Tile data since that seems to be within their core operation model.
I'm surprised Meta (aka. FB) does not already own both Life360 and Tile since both are already aligned with their own business model.
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