Tile’s New Owner Life360 Is Selling Millions Of Families’ Personal Data: Report
Image ID 210111037 © via Seemanta Dutta | Dreamstime.com
Life360, an app that allows families to track one another’s location, has been alleged to have sold its users’ personal data, including precise locations, to “approximately a dozen data brokers,” according to a report by The Markup.
While it’s common for apps that track users’ locations to sell user data, the issue with Life360 is that it’s been accused of failing to sufficiently anonymize the information before handing it off to third parties. This could put families’ safety at risk, especially when these brokers sell the data “to virtually anyone who wants to buy it.”
According to the report, companies purchasing data from the app could easily trace the information back to specific users, as their locations aren’t scrubbed out, aggregated, or masked for privacy. Not to mention, as Life360 is commonly used by parents to ensure the safety of their kids, much of the data that comes from its 31 million users is of children under the age of 18.
At the moment, the app has yet to respond to the allegations, though families using the app should remain cautious in the meantime. CNET pointed out that the exposé has come just weeks after Life360 acquired fob tracker firm Tile, so it remains to be known if this is the next step in the company’s plan to expand its offerings in the location tracking space.
[via CNET, cover image via Seemanta Dutta | Dreamstime.com]
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