<story><title>Popular Family Safety App Life360 Selling Precise Location Data on Its Users</title><url>https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/12/06/the-popular-family-safety-app-life360-is-selling-precise-location-data-on-its-tens-of-millions-of-user</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Syonyk</author><text>Of &lt;i&gt;course&lt;/i&gt; they are.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Everyone&lt;/i&gt; is double dipping anymore.  Pay for the app, but you&amp;#x27;re really the product being sold.  Any app that can get location access is probably doing something you don&amp;#x27;t like with it.  Your &amp;quot;Smart TV&amp;quot; is hoovering up as much as it can to send upstream (including using content recognition algorithms on the DVD and game console inputs), your &amp;quot;connected car&amp;quot; is almost certainly doing the same thing, your OSes are probably doing it... the whole of the modern tech industry is rotten, and nowhere is this more clear than the cell phone data mining industry.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s big money in this sort of backend data analytics... deception?  deceit?  Whatever you want to call it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;He did confirm that X-Mode buys data from Life360 and that it is one of “approximately one dozen data partners.” Hulls added that the company would be supportive of legislation that would require public disclosure of such partners.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;accidentally&amp;quot; end up with a dozen data partners unless your goal is data collection and sale.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll offer a guiding principle that&amp;#x27;s been serving me well: If you can imagine how the data is being abused, it certainly is.  If you can&amp;#x27;t come up with a possible way for some bit of data to be abused... someone else is more creative than you and has found a way to monetize it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>x0x0</author><text>If I were cynical, I&amp;#x27;d suspect Life 360 (and similar companies) were created first with the goal of selling location data, and from there worked backwards to figure out what sort of app&amp;#x2F;company would require a continuous stream of location data.  And worked from there.  Which is becoming more valuable as ios and android give users more granular control over apps getting location data...</text></comment>
<story><title>Popular Family Safety App Life360 Selling Precise Location Data on Its Users</title><url>https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/12/06/the-popular-family-safety-app-life360-is-selling-precise-location-data-on-its-tens-of-millions-of-user</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Syonyk</author><text>Of &lt;i&gt;course&lt;/i&gt; they are.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Everyone&lt;/i&gt; is double dipping anymore.  Pay for the app, but you&amp;#x27;re really the product being sold.  Any app that can get location access is probably doing something you don&amp;#x27;t like with it.  Your &amp;quot;Smart TV&amp;quot; is hoovering up as much as it can to send upstream (including using content recognition algorithms on the DVD and game console inputs), your &amp;quot;connected car&amp;quot; is almost certainly doing the same thing, your OSes are probably doing it... the whole of the modern tech industry is rotten, and nowhere is this more clear than the cell phone data mining industry.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s big money in this sort of backend data analytics... deception?  deceit?  Whatever you want to call it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;He did confirm that X-Mode buys data from Life360 and that it is one of “approximately one dozen data partners.” Hulls added that the company would be supportive of legislation that would require public disclosure of such partners.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;accidentally&amp;quot; end up with a dozen data partners unless your goal is data collection and sale.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll offer a guiding principle that&amp;#x27;s been serving me well: If you can imagine how the data is being abused, it certainly is.  If you can&amp;#x27;t come up with a possible way for some bit of data to be abused... someone else is more creative than you and has found a way to monetize it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ljm</author><text>Would not surprise me if there were people in these businesses who thought, &amp;quot;why would we leave FREE money on the table?&amp;quot; A promotion or two later after palming off their customer&amp;#x27;s data to whoever had the cash handy, they&amp;#x27;re off to do the same at another business.&lt;p&gt;I think they&amp;#x27;re called MBAs but I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s unique to that style of professional.</text></comment>