Tile Buyer Life360 Selling Precise Location Data on Millions of Users [Updated]

[Cicnod]

It’s not free.

It is free. I use it and my family uses and have for years. Don't pay a dime. I have to laugh a ;little at how important people here think they are. Personally I couldn't care less. I have nothing I need to hide nor do I care if anyone knows where I have gone or what I have bought.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

I didn’t forget that, but an iPod wasn’t a requirement to use iTunes. Most of my friends in highschool used iTunes but didn’t own an iPod. It was free, and not one of them was the product.

It's the other way around. iTunes was a requirement to use an iPod. iTunes was also the primary store/player for music/movies/tv-shows for the iPod, so part of the reason it existed was also to literally sell you content. Technically you can still use iTunes as a music management software, but most people needed iTunes because they had an iPod.

On the Mac iTunes could have existed as a Jukebox software included with OS X, but if it wasn't for iPods and the iTunes Store, iTunes on Windows would have never existed or would have been extremely short-lived like Safari for Windows. There simply isn't the profit motive in doing that. It's no wonder it arrived at the same time as Apple started marketing iPods as Windows compatible.

 

[AMacHasNoName]

These guys are just trash at this point. Good thing I only use them to find remotes in the house

 

[Itinj24]

Ya that's why car thieves prefer to use Airtags instead of Tile to steal cars right because Tile is SO accruate.

Apple AirTag Linked to Increasing Number of Car Thefts, Canadian Police Report

Apple's AirTags are being used in an increasing number of targeted car thefts in Canada, according to local police. Outlined in a news release from York Regional Police, investigators have identified a new method being used by thieves to track down and steal high-end vehicles that takes...

forums.macrumors.com

Umm, I wasn’t talking about AirTags or Tiles. I’m taking about the live tracking feature of people (Life360 and Find My) which uses the person’s cell phone for location. Apple just introduced this in iOS 15 and it rarely, if ever, works. However it worked great in the Life360 app. That’s all I was saying. Tile had nothing to do with Life360 a few years ago.

 

[Itinj24]

Have you used Apples’s AirTags?

Yes, I have 8 of them but that has nothing to do with my post whatsoever. Never was I taking about Tile and AirTags. I am strictly referring to the Live tracking of people in the Find My app. The feature that was just introduced in iOS15. It’s terrible. Rarely, if ever, works. It was great and worked perfectly in Life360. AirTags and Tile’s affiliation with Life360 didn’t even exist a few years ago.

 

[Scoob Redux]

You can keep pasting that over and over, but the physical hardware is NOT free.

Life360 doesn't sell hardware. This article is about Life360, where they offer a FREE service, and you are the product.

 

[bradl]

It is free. I use it and my family uses and have for years. Don't pay a dime. I have to laugh a ;little at how important people here think they are. Personally I couldn't care less. I have nothing I need to hide nor do I care if anyone knows where I have gone or what I have bought.

Not for nothing, but it doesn't have to do with where you have gone or what you have bought.. Consider the airtags issue: if they are able to track you, and say, in real time, what is to stop someone malicious who has access to that realtime data to track where you are and... oh, say, steal your car or break into your car to steal what you've bought?

Your intentions in relation to the data they are selling may be benign and innocent, but that doesn't mean someone else's intentions with that data is.

BL.

 

[sanook997]

And this is why we need a Geneva Convention level standard for data acquisition, sharing, and deletion amongst as many nations as possible. The genie has long left the bottle, the horse left the barn in another country, etc. Only way to get it back is to apply standards, regulations, and teeth to those entrusted with data. It's a royal pain in the &&& to do it but these companies have proved they are either not capable or willing to do it themselves.

No, you do have another choice, stop using free services and services not provided by Apple. Not that Apple is perfect....far from it, but it is clearly the most scrutinized and most damageable brand out there should they break privacy rules.

 

[coolfactor]

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.

I use Find My tracking daily to see where the better half is, but find the slow updating to be frustrating! I used to use the same tracking ... 7 years ago ... on an iPad that I sent to my girlfriend in Singapore and I could follow her down the street in real time! Night and day compared to how slow it is today, and I think that's partly intentional for privacy reasons. I just wish it was real-time like it used to be.

 

[Abazigal]

No, you do have another choice, stop using free services and services not provided by Apple. Not that Apple is perfect....far from it, but it is clearly the most scrutinized and most damageable brand out there should they break privacy rules.

And this is why I am actually in favour of Apple introducing more privacy oriented measures, and there being only one App Store which Apple owns and controls, so developers can’t skirt around these measures.

Something like ATT wouldn’t have been as effective if facebook had a facebook App Store where they could offer a version of their app without said feature.

I feel the next step would be to acquire an app like Lockdown and preinstalled it on all iOS devices to block trackers on a device level. And once Apple has the server capacity, to extend private relay to include traffic from all apps on my device.

All while continuing to court the best customers (via the iphone) to ensure that developers cannot afford to ignore said platform.

 

[TiggrToo]

I use Find My tracking daily to see where the better half is, but find the slow updating to be frustrating! I used to use the same tracking ... 7 years ago ... on an iPad that I sent to my girlfriend in Singapore and I could follow her down the street in real time! Night and day compared to how slow it is today, and I think that's partly intentional for privacy reasons. I just wish it was real-time like it used to be.

It's real-time in iOS 15

 

[Cicnod]

Not for nothing, but it doesn't have to do with where you have gone or what you have bought.. Consider the airtags issue: if they are able to track you, and say, in real time, what is to stop someone malicious who has access to that realtime data to track where you are and... oh, say, steal your car or break into your car to steal what you've bought?

Your intentions in relation to the data they are selling may be benign and innocent, but that doesn't mean someone else's intentions with that data is.

BL.

They have to figure out what car is mine. And in the end if someone wants to break into my car they certainly don't need this to. Your premise makes no sense. You think someone who wants to break into my car (which BTW never has anything of value in it) wants to travel to where I am driving by thousands of cars they could break into and instead target mine which has nothing in it?

 

[Itinj24]

It's real-time in iOS 15

Has it been working for you reliably? Mine worked with iOS 15 but then 15.1 broke it. I can’t get live updates on my wife and she can’t with me. Back to pre iOS 15.

 

[mech986]

Honestly surprised Zuck hasn’t taken a swing at doing precisely this yet. Please don’t give them ideas.

Oh, don’t worry. Every Oculus headset and now Meta Portal device will have precise IP, location, time, email and address info, maybe even transcripts of everything said, or copies of the video feeds on both ends. Or more. Trust them to mine everything they can from every bit of data.

Did I also mention you probably tie either device to your FB, Instagram, or other email accounts where your info get aggregated and correlated with your above info? That’s how you profitably sell user info to others.

 

[TheHammer]

AirTag tracking is free too after you buy the hardware. Are you saying customers are the product in that transaction too?

The tracking data is not coming from the Tile, you only need a phone and the app, that combination is free without in-app purchases. The purchasing of Tile is recent and this issue pre-dates that.

 

[Solomani]

Who's shocked?

Not me...

Add them to the list of scumbag companies...

This very scumbaggy practice may seal the final nail in Tile's coffin. Privacy-conscious customers will avoid Tile (Life360) like the plague.

Oh but wait for it.... because of the above.... Tile may self-destruct and then as they gasp their final breath, they BLAME APPLE for their self-destructive death, and then they file a huge lawsuit against Apple demanding $950 billion (or nearly 40% of everything Apple is worth).

 

[dysamoria]

The tech industry is a goddamned nightmare. It hasn’t been even slightly regulated pretty much ever.

 

[Marshall73]

so this is how tile ends.

 

[Scoob Redux]

It is free. I use it and my family uses and have for years. Don't pay a dime. I have to laugh a ;little at how important people here think they are. Personally I couldn't care less. I have nothing I need to hide nor do I care if anyone knows where I have gone or what I have bought.

It's not necessarily a matter of having anything to hide or caring if someone tracks you. The issue is that many users think of a service like Life360 as "free", when in fact users are giving something of value (habits, likes, dislikes, whereabouts, even the company you keep) to a corporation for free. The correct way to evaluate the value proposition is: Am I giving something of far greater value than I am getting? In reality, your tracking data could be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars when aggregated and sold by the corporation. In essence, you are giving away thousands of dollars' worth of personal data for what? An app to help track your family? (honestly, idk what Life360 does, anyway). It's the same with Facebook or any other data collector. Most people don't value their own data nearly as much as it is actually worth. Hence data collectors make billions off the masses who say "I'm not that important, I don't care who tracks me."

 

[msp3]

>install spyware that spies on family members location information

>get upset when said location information is sold to the highest bidder

People who use this garbage willingly deserve this and more.

 

[bradl]

They have to figure out what car is mine. And in the end if someone wants to break into my car they certainly don't need this to. Your premise makes no sense. You think someone who wants to break into my car (which BTW never has anything of value in it) wants to travel to where I am driving by thousands of cars they could break into and instead target mine which has nothing in it?

Yet that is exactly what is happening with people tracking cars to steal with Airtags.

Car Thieves Are Using AirTags to Track Vehicles

York Regional Police said at least five vehicles have been targeted by car thieves who used Apple's item tracker.

www.pcmag.com

Wash/rinse/repeat with Tile/Life360, and with even more exact data from Life360/Tile.

BL.

 

[haruhiko]

First, “what about Apple?” and now even the classic “I have nothing to hide” argument came up! Cheers! ??????

 

[bkaus]

Guess the next trip to track for the tile is to the landfill.

 

[bradl]

Guess the next trip to track for the tile is to the landfill.

Careful now; they'll track you there.

BL.

 

[obamtl]

Apple literally can just kick back and relax… their competitors seem to be doing their privacy-as-a-feature marketing for them ?

Apple make their money by having you deeper in the ecosystem, meaning they get to make more money from your future purchases of Apple products and services. But we know that going in and we still have the choice (even if it's a difficult one) to leave the ecosystem.

Once your data is sold, you can't exactly ask for it back - and even if you could, you can't take the knowledge third parties have derived from your data from them.