Tile Hopes $1 Million Fine Will Deter Stalkers From Making Their Trackers Untrackable

After months of reports of Bluetooth tracking devices like Apple’s AirTags being used to track people for miles, one of the first companies to popularize these trackers, tileadds a feature that makes its devices “undetectable” to the proprietary app that scans for nearby unwanted devices.

Oh no, of course, the company doesn’t just let all of its users toss a tracker in their ex’s purse. To prevent any rude use of these now “invisible” tracking devices, the company promises to turn over all data to the police and then fine convicted stalkers $1 million.

Tile, now owned by family-owned site sharing company Life360 after an acquisition in 2021announced in a press release Thursday that allows users to enable “Anti-Theft Mode” on any Tile tracker, including other products that use its tracking technology. This prevents the device from being recognized by the company’s in-app feature, which allows users to search for nearby Tile devices. This new feature is driven by “customer demand” citing an increase in thefts and robberies.

However, the company failed to mention that tracking device thefts in particular are on the rise. Instead, it cited a nearly a decade-old United Nations report on drugs and crime, as well as a report from 2022 Report on the increase in property crime by the Council on Criminal Justice, a non-profit research group. Hardly a year has passed since then Tile added its “Scan and Secure” tool to check if there were unwanted trackers on their person.

In an email statement to Gizmodo, a Life360 spokesperson said they had no information about Tile thefts because “theft isn’t always reported to Tile,” but they claimed customers feared theft for a “theft solution.” would have asked robberies are increasing.

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Apple has handled a whirlwind of criticism and now it is complain that his AirTags have been used by stalkers to track victims. Apple has features on his iPhones that should notify users if an unknown AirTag is on their person (you have to do it Download a whole separate app on Android phones), but Tile is very open about the fact that it doesn’t notify nearby smartphones when they’re out with an unknown tracker. The company argued that these notifications “can tell thieves that there is a tracker on the stolen item, allowing them to remove it and making the item less likely to be recovered.”

To enroll in anti-theft mode, users must submit a biometric scan and provide government-issued ID. Life360’s spokesperson said that all user information, including ID, is stored by Berbix, a third-party company that does this identity verification. The company said it does not sell or monetize the data and will destroy biometric information “when the information is no longer needed for verification and fraud detection purposes.”

Additionally, Tile and Life360 said they will actively stand ready to release users’ personal information to law enforcement “even without a subpoena.”

As early as 2021, reports indicated that Life360 was doing well Known for selling the location data to users handed over to data brokers, whether they were families or children. In fact, the company is keen on selling user data to “virtually anyone who wants to buy it.” The company announced this last year Stop selling accurate user location data.

This probably won’t get victims and potential victims to sleep any better, but what makes this all the stranger is the $1 million fine that’s promised to be used against “any person convicted in court for being… used Tile devices to illegally track an individual without their knowledge or consent.”

For Tile, proactive notifications from trackers like AirTags were “insufficient” for victim protection, which is partially true. However, rather than develop a new means of preventing this incredibly dangerous form of technological stalking, the company is simply throwing its hands up. Life360 CEO Chris Hulls called this a “choice,” specifically between making their devices visible or invisible. If they want to “sleep a little easier at night,” users should make these devices invisible to other users.

in one Medium blog Released Wednesday, Hulls said its own testing of AirTags showed devices taking hours or days to find unwanted trackers.

“The bottom line is that a good tracking device is also a good stalking device,” he wrote, further claiming that it’s “nearly impossible” to make both accurate and timely alerts for unwanted trackers.

Rather than making unwanted trackers easily identifiable, Hulls says the real solution is to “implement safeguards like ID registration of all location-enabled devices.”

So according to Tile, and more broadly Apple, our only option is to bind every single location-enabled device, whether it’s a phone or smartwatch, with your personal ID. Otherwise, all potential victims will have to sit in hell wondering if a malicious actor is Attaching an unwanted Bluetooth tracker to their person.