{"id":34380,"date":"2021-12-07T17:00:42","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T22:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=34380"},"modified":"2021-12-07T17:00:42","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T22:00:42","slug":"life360-sells-precise-user-location-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/07\/life360-sells-precise-user-location-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Life360 Sells Precise User Location Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jon Keegan and Alfred Ng<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>, Reddit<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Life360, a popular family safety app used by 33 million people worldwide, has been marketed as a great way for parents to track their children’s movements using their cellphones. The Markup has learned, however, that the app is selling data on kids’ and families’ whereabouts to approximately a dozen data brokers who have sold data to virtually anyone who wants to buy it.<\/p>

Through interviews with two former employees of the company, along with two individuals who formerly worked at location data brokers Cuebiq and X-Mode, The Markup discovered that the app acts as a firehose of data for a controversial industry that has operated in the shadows<\/a> with few safeguards to prevent the misuse of this sensitive information.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Life360 discloses in the fine print of its privacy policy<\/a> that it sells the data it gleans from app users, but Justin Sherman, a cyber policy fellow at the Duke Tech Policy Lab, said people are probably not aware of how far their data can travel.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

Two former Life360 employees also told The Markup that the company, while it states it anonymizes the data it sells, fails to take necessary precautions to ensure that location histories cannot be traced back to individuals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

In 2019, Apple pulled about a dozen<\/a> parental control apps from the App Store over privacy concerns<\/a>, since they abused Mobile Device Management, though I cannot find any reports that Life360 was among them. However, I did come across a Wired<\/em> article from later that year<\/a> in which Louise Matsakis reported that Life360’s public trading prospectus indicated the value it sees in mining its vast collection of user data — largely of children — for profit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n