It’s unhealthy sufficient that most providers promote your information to others to make a fast buck, however when it’s a service billing itself as a security characteristic? Yikes. That’s precisely what Life360, the monitoring software program utilized by thousands and thousands worldwide, is doing.
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A brand new report from The Markup says the corporate is promoting exact location information to a few dozen information brokers. That quantity is probably going on the low finish, because it doesn’t account for all the businesses that these brokers service.
Sure, you learn that accurately. That’s an app that you just use to trace your loved ones’s location, for his or her security. Promoting your loved ones’s exact location information to information brokers. Who then sells that location information to actually anybody who’s prepared to pay for it.
They’re so profitable at it that former workers and a few of the information brokers name Life360 “one of many largest sources of information for the trade.”
It’s not exhausting to see why, with Life360’s app not simply sharing location information, however additionally how briskly individuals are driving, how a lot battery their cellular phone has, and extra. It’s free to make use of for the core product, with some superior options requiring fee.
The uncooked location information bought to information brokers has ended up in governmental businesses, such because the CDC as a part of the COVID-19 monitoring efforts, and even to the Division of Defence. Whereas Life360 does have a coverage in opposition to gross sales to the federal government for regulation enforcement use, that coverage solely went into impact in 2020. Life360 has been promoting location information to its companions since 2016.
The story will get muddier with Life360 including extra location monitoring firms to its portfolio this 12 months. Monitoring {hardware} firm Jiobit was bought for $37 million earlier this 12 months, and Tile is being acquired for $205 million. Certain, Life360’s CEO says they haven’t any plans to promote the info from these gadgets at the moment, however plans change.
When you’re a consumer of Life360 who doesn’t need their location information bought, you may opt-out. Head to Settings > Privateness & Safety > Do Not Promote My Private Data after which toggle the change subsequent to Private Data Gross sales.