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I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

nytimes.com

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Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#151

Post by crhulls »

Klonoar wrote: post #146
crhulls wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We sold the app in its entirety, which did include data, to a startup run by a former employee. It didn't really get going and the servers are all wound down, so I assume the data is gone into the ether for good (I am 90% confident on this last point - I will confirm).

The confirmation would be greatly appreciated. :) Would you also be comfortable with me linking to this discussion/comment on that post as a 2022 edit? I still get people emailing me asking if anything was ever determined on it.

sure - do you want to send me an email at chris at life360 .com and I'll follow up with you there?

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#152

Post by password4321 »

Osiris wrote: post #77

My wife and I have Google maps location sharing turned on all the time. It's not stepping because we agreed to it. Last night I got home from a motorcycle ride and the garage door opened as I pulled up because my wife knew I was coming home from a movie and saw I was almost home.

Can anyone share how they do this self-hosted? I'd guess a custom protocol would be worse battery-wise, but I would be able to plug in while in the car.

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#154

Post by stronglikedan »

underwater wrote: post #140
kbos87 wrote: post #32

My comment isn’t specific to AirTags, but there’s a much larger conversation that needs to be had about this gray area of stalking capabilities that are now built into many mainstream products. Here’s a pattern I’ve seen play out more than once among friends and family - they share their location willingly and for seemingly benign reasons. It’s helpful to know when you’ll be getting home so I can start dinner! Just i…

Facebook Messenger implements this as "send location" which lets the other party track you for the next hour. I've found this useful without being creepy. I can share my location contextually, like if I'm picking someone up or meeting them somewhere.

Google maps too. I've used it with friends on camping trips.

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#155

Post by sleepybrett »

kbos87 wrote: post #32

My comment isn’t specific to AirTags, but there’s a much larger conversation that needs to be had about this gray area of stalking capabilities that are now built into many mainstream products. Here’s a pattern I’ve seen play out more than once among friends and family - they share their location willingly and for seemingly benign reasons. It’s helpful to know when you’ll be getting home so I can start dinner! Just i…

yeah, concerning the feature in the apple ecosystem to share your location with someone else is great, i just wish it had a feature that alerted the you whenever someone used it to locate one of your devices. That way if say i went to the big state fair with my friend and we shared our locations with each other in case we got separated but then forgot to shut it off. If a few days later i got notified that my friend had just located me i could shut it off and/or have a conversation with them about boundries.

The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#156

Post by acomjean »

908B64B197 wrote: post #119
acomjean wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I took my partners dog for the afternoon. It has an airtag (not an official supported use). I knew the dog had it but there was some comment made about our walk. Monitoring by proxy. When I worked at a power monitoring startup (we monitored home power use, by individual circuit) this passive monitoring came up. And our CEO mentioned to his wife that she was home early.. "how did you know?" He saw the garage doo…

One great use case of passive monitoring is detecting water leaks, especially for vacation homes. > It has an airtag (not an official supported use) I'm surprised. That sounds like a great use for it, especially for a larger breed that runs fast.

> especially for a larger breed that runs fast.

Young Husky. Medium breed that can run far and sometimes doesn't listen (like a cat... but bigger)

They have pet trackers.. But I'm not sure if its because its transmitting a lot and its close to them on their collar.. In this case in on her going outside harness..

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#157

Post by crhulls »

CharlesW wrote: post #120
crhulls wrote: post #88

Hi All, I'm the cofounder and CEO of Life360, which is the relatively new owner of Tile. Stalking hasn't been much of an issue for us, but we are in the process expanding the finding network via our 35 million+ active user base (will require opt-in consent) and we also do offer a location device for kids and pets (Jiobit) that has its own cell connection which is actually meant for finding people in real-time. We hav…

It's interesting that you decided to appear here in an effort to position Life360 as a more-private alternative to Apple solutions. "We see data as an important part of our business model that allows us to keep the core Life360 services free for the majority of our users, including features that have improved driver safety and saved numerous lives." — You "In 2020, the company made $16 million—nearly 20 percent of it…

I was a bit worried about posting here because I had a suspicion I would get comments like this which assume I'm here on a PR pitch and clearly come at me with assumptions of negative intent.

I'll make a few points:

1) Stalking is completely different than a data platform used for targeted advertising and research.

2) Good minds can disagree on how user data should be used. We decided to shut down our data business because it wasn't worth the distraction - we have over $200m of revenue and it is not core to our business so we decided to move on. It should be noted we have always been extremely transparent with our customer and allowed anyone, whether a free or paying user, to have fine grain control over how we use data.

3) I am not positioning us as a more-private alternative to Apple. If this is a real problem that is emerging, I'd like to understand how we can address it. There are a lot of smart minds here.

4) Our user base is largely middle American moms - this is not the place we go to do PR!

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#158

Post by selectodude »

kelnos wrote: post #105
tokamak-teapot wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it hard to buy a SIM card in much of the world? I can walk into one or about ten shops within 5km of here and buy one instantly. I think the price is ‘free’ but you pay something like EUR 10 to have credit on it. If you want to be anonymous, you can wear a hood and a mask and pay with cash.

In the US, it's very unusual to buy a SIM card outside of purchasing a phone and phone plan. And while we do have prepaid options, they're much less commonly used than in other countries. At a quick glance, the cheapest T-Mobile plan is $60/mo, or $45/mo if you're adding a second line to an existing plan. You can also get a SIM card intended for IoT usage, but this is probably not something your average non-technical…

T-Mobile will give you unlimited talk and text + 2.5GB of data for $15/mo.

https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/plan-detail/t-mobile-connect

Re: I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

#159

Post by crhulls »

chaircher wrote: post #123
crhulls wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get I think something on the order of 10,000 customer service tickets a week, and we regularly get subpoenas. We've heard almost every story you can think of. Although we are getting inquiries with this recent press, in terms of actual reports of stalking via our devices it is essentially zero. AirTags has a much broader network than us as of now. Part of why we bought Tile is because we can expand their network.…

What do you mean by "actual stalking report"? ID verification is the way to go IMO. So much stalking isn't like in movies, it's just seemingly normal people seeing how far they can push things and get away with it. And potentially some way to get people to register what it's being used for, as well as a way to register it missing. That would be very useful in a stalking case to cross-reference with how a the alledged…

I mean that we do know what it is like when users are stalked with our product - we've heard all sorts of crazy stories over the years about our app being used for stalking - it sucks when we hear it and we help with law enforcement. This just hasn't been a thing for Tile (yet anyway - probably due to the much less dense network).

I think we will end up with ID verification - I bet Apple could do that too. Then you'd be risking a felony if you use the product illegally.

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