31 million families and kids use Life360, a popular tracking app that bills itself as the world's leading family safety service, and it is said to be selling location data on them to data brokers. The revelation may make users of the Tile tracker think twice before using it.
The report was published by the Markup on Monday. The report claims that Life360 sells location data to a number of data brokers, some of which have sold data to the U.S. government. The location data is sold to anyone who wants to buy it. The outlet found that Life360 is one of the largest sources of data for the industry.
While selling location data on families and kids is alarming, what is even more frightening is that Life360 is failing to protect the privacy of the data it sells. This could allow the location data to be linked back to the people it belongs to.
It is important to note that Life360 does sell the data it gets from users. They may not know that their data can be sold or that their identity can be revealed. Data broker customers are not allowed to re-identifying users.
Interviews with former employees of Life360 and former employees of the data brokers that supposedly buy data from the company were used to make the report.
Chris Hulls told the Markup that the company could not confirm or deny the accuracy of its data, which is one of the largest sources of data for the industry. He said that selling location data allowed it to offer free services. These include location sharing, location ETAs, family driving reports, two days of location history, and battery monitoring.
Data is an important part of the business model that allows us to keep the core Life360 services free for the majority of our users, including features that have improved driver safety and saved numerous lives.
Life360 told Gizmodo on Monday that it was preparing a response to the report. It claimed that the report was full of misinformation and that it was taking further action on it. Life360 said that the information it gave the outlet had been included in the report and that the quotes it published weren't accurate and had been taken out of context.
The location data sale has proved to be an important financial lifeline for Life360. The outlet reported that Life360 had a loss of $16.3 million last year.
In the past, Life360 has gotten a lot of money from selling location data. The company made $16 million from selling location data in 2020. It earned $6 million from a partnership with the Arity, a mobility data and analytics company founded by the insurer.
Hulls told the Markup that the company has no plans to sell location data from Tile devices.
You can read the full report here.
