Last month, the tracking company Life360 has taken tracker keychain maker Tile for about $ 200 million. So by boat soon, it seemed that the former owners of the manufacturer of the famous keychains were throwing in the towel before the irruption in the market of Apple’s AirTags and Samsung’s SmarTags.
But it seems that the intentions of the new buyer of the brand Tile They were none other than taking advantage of the 33 million users of Tile keyrings and selling their location to third companies. What a fabric.
A few weeks ago we reported that the famous Tile keychains were changing owners. The company had been bought by the Life360 firm, which is also dedicated to the location and tracking service.
The Markup has just published a report where it explains that said buying firm, Life360, is selling the location data of the 33 million users of Tile keychains to the highest bidder. Textually they indicate “to practically anyone who wants to buy them.”
Life360 is a platform for location with very clear functions such as location history, favorite routes, personalized alerts, SOS messages and more. According to The Markup, said company has been using the Tile application to collect and sell data from its users to third parties.
The Business of Data Bundling
The article explains that Life360 won 16 million dollars last year just selling your users’ location data. One of the company’s former employees described the company as “one of the largest sources of data for the industry.” So you can start to worry if you own a Tile keychain.
Chris hulls, founder and current CEO of Life360, has never denied this activity. He argues that data is an “important part of our business model”, as these benefits allow the company to offer free services to users. Hulls has also clarified that the company has privacy policies to prevent its users from being identified through such data. A malpractice, without a doubt …
