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I’m the CEO of Life360 which owns Tile. We are exploring a program that would disable anti-stalking features if we could verify someone’s identity to then enabl

I’m the CEO of Life360 which owns Tile. We are exploring a program that would disable anti-stalking features if we could verify someone’s identity to then enable our devices to be used to protect against theft, which is not possible with AirTags (a thief can just scan for your tags). Our belief is that by adding more friction and increasing the risk of punishment we can make these devices far more powerful for the 99.999% of users who are responsible. We don’t want outliers to ruin it for everyone. If a stalker wants to track someone there are inexpensive stealth GPS devices with their own cell connections that allow real-time location - we make them too - but for whatever reason there hasn’t been any negative attention on this side of the location device category. Are there any thoughts or implementation suggestions on this?

InTheArena 4y ago
How on earth do you read this article, and then come to the conclusion that the answer is to disable anti-stalking mechanisms (which apple, due to using the UWB and their own protocol has vastly better ones) then your own product? This is the necessary trade off. Long time user of Tiles, and then later airtags - I travel a lot, and I have a tendency to leave my bags, so for me they save me a lot of money. My dog wears one. My kids and wife are bugged constantly with alerts that a unknown device is with them (with my name on it), but that's acceptable because somewhere a jealous ex-partner is using this for ill, or someone is trying to isolate someone for a crime. This is the perception problem. Apple introducing anti-stalker controls with the Airtag's didn't introduce a new problem - it revealed one that was already there.
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  Because theft protection is an extremely compelling use case of trackers. Unfortunately, features that make a compelling anti-theft device (concealability, secrecy) are diametrically opposed to features that make it hard to abuse for stalking purposes. It would be a killer app to somehow have the best of both worlds. I agree that robust authentication is one way to go about this. Perhaps a tracker could have a “stolen” mode, that when enabled disables anti-stalking features but also automatically notifies the police with the identity of the tracker’s owner.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >Because theft protection is an extremely compelling use case of trackers. Is it really? In many places, the police won't do anything. Are you going to track down and confront the thieves who stole your bike?
    - mwint 4y ago
      Pro tip: the cops will help you if you call them and say “hey, I’m outside (address) and I can see my stolen bike, I’m going to go retrieve my property, let me know if you want to help. Also I’m armed.” They’ll help.
      - rsync 4y ago
        This is terrible advice - and it is also incorrect. Police will respond, most assuredly, if you declare this intention, but you will be at best a complicating factor and at worst an additional deadly threat. Finally, if it was all a ruse you could find yourself in serious legal jeopardy if any violent - or deadly - outcomes ensue.
        mwint 4y ago
        In free states, it’s common and not a big deal to tell dispatchers & police that you’re armed. Usually the cops will just ask where your weapon is, then say “cool, don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you”. Not a big deal. They’re generally not concerned about people who voluntarily surrender their element of surprise.
        rsync 4y ago
        The world doesn’t always play out perfectly the way you’ve imagined it - even in “free states”. You’re rolling the dice with that behavior and I hope you never come up snake eyes.
        ghaff 4y ago
arka2147483647 4y ago
Is there any way that you could filter our bad faith stealing requests by stalkers? Eg, put tracker named backbag on victim, reguest full tracking on bagpack. I cant see how you could remotely filter for that?
edderly 4y ago
The obvious first thought is that any implementation for tracking should be open source and be backed by a publicly available standard.
- notriddle 4y ago
  It’s a poorly-conceived first thought. How does having the source code protect someone against a tracking bug hidden underneath their car? Is a stalking victim supposed to upload a modified firmware to a computer they don’t have physical access to, and might not even know exists? Or do you figure that giving more power to the person deploying the computer, the perpetrator, is somehow going to help the people they victimize?
  - edderly 4y ago
    I suspect you're over indexing on what what a person being stalked would do with code. The source code is a tool, and it can become clear to people outside of the corporate interests what the security model or lack thereof is. I'm curious whether you think there is any benefit for tracking technology to be proprietary.
causality0 4y ago
As someone who owns half a dozen Tiles, one of the reasons Tile had its lunch eaten by AirTags is the persistent disconnect between Tile management and their audience. You created a product that appeals most to techies and hackers and then buried it in anti-consumer nonsense. Normies can't tell the difference, but we notice when you charge for things that don't cost you any money to provide. Before AirTags I used to give a lot of Tiles as Christmas and birthday gifts. I don't know a single person who saw you trying to charge three dollars a month for the app to notify you of loss of signal and didn't go "Oh my God, go fuck yourself".
jhloa2 4y ago
I don’t see how your solution really fixes anything as the device would still have to be found for there to be any consequences. It seems like it might help with the blatant attempts described in the article where an AirTag was slipped into someone’s pocket, but I would probably never find a well hidden device glued to my car. I hope you do find a good solution though because I don’t want to pay a monthly subscription for a gps tracker for theft protection on my motorcycle. It would be nice to just be able to drop in a tile or AirTag and forget about it until I needed jt
gjsman-1000 4y ago
This is painful, but it is worth considering that "outliers" so far have meant 1 person dead from an AirTag, as well as a few dozen stalking incidents. I believe anti-stalking features should be added, but there needs to be balance and also perspective on the safety of things. It's easy to focus on those people who were injured, forgetting the perspective that in general, these trackers are very safe. - How many people are killed from cars every year? Drunk driving? - 1,000 children are injured in California alone every year from pencils. Some have died. As I've said elsewhere, you are more likely to die from a pencil than a shark. - Over 1 million people land in the Emergency Room every year for a stair-related accident. Over 12,000 die. - 12 people die from taking selfies every year. - 450 people die from falling out of bed every year. - 150 people die every year from having a coconut fall on their head. - 7,000 people die every year from a doctor's sloppy handwriting on the prescription. - 2,500 left-handed people die every year from using right-handed tools. - 29 people die every year from being buried alive by accident. All of these are things we don't consider dangerous, and would often happily give our children or teenagers. Thus, while anti-stalking features of a kind should be added (an alarm if left alone too long?), we shouldn't dwell on too few people. Many of these issues kill far, far more people and we just can't avoid it - we can't force people to not take selfies, or doctors to always have perfect handwriting, or open every grave every day following for a week. Attempting to mitigate every weird cause of death is not possible and would require totalitarianism.
shapefrog 4y ago
You should probably have passed on this one. Everyone is up in arms about the apple tracker, not your one which is nearly identical. Take the win!
- giaour 4y ago
  AirTags are actively tracked by every iPhone. That’s a pretty big difference!
- InTheArena 4y ago
  no, far worse. If someone is tracking you on a tile there is zero protection - android or iphone that someone has unless they installed the scan and search app, which was only available in march this year - _years_ after the product was introduced.
cr3ative 4y ago
You appear to have just invented Trusted Stalkers. This is worse, not better.

InTheArena 4y ago

How on earth do you read this article, and then come to the conclusion that the answer is to disable anti-stalking mechanisms (which apple, due to using the UWB and their own protocol has vastly better ones) then your own product? This is the necessary trade off. Long time user of Tiles, and then later airtags - I travel a lot, and I have a tendency to leave my bags, so for me they save me a lot of money. My dog wears one. My kids and wife are bugged constantly with alerts that a unknown device is with them (with my name on it), but that's acceptable because somewhere a jealous ex-partner is using this for ill, or someone is trying to isolate someone for a crime. This is the perception problem. Apple introducing anti-stalker controls with the Airtag's didn't introduce a new problem - it revealed one that was already there.

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Because theft protection is an extremely compelling use case of trackers. Unfortunately, features that make a compelling anti-theft device (concealability, secrecy) are diametrically opposed to features that make it hard to abuse for stalking purposes. It would be a killer app to somehow have the best of both worlds. I agree that robust authentication is one way to go about this. Perhaps a tracker could have a “stolen” mode, that when enabled disables anti-stalking features but also automatically notifies the police with the identity of the tracker’s owner.
- ghaff 4y ago
  >Because theft protection is an extremely compelling use case of trackers. Is it really? In many places, the police won't do anything. Are you going to track down and confront the thieves who stole your bike?
  - mwint 4y ago
    Pro tip: the cops will help you if you call them and say “hey, I’m outside (address) and I can see my stolen bike, I’m going to go retrieve my property, let me know if you want to help. Also I’m armed.” They’ll help.
    - rsync 4y ago
      This is terrible advice - and it is also incorrect. Police will respond, most assuredly, if you declare this intention, but you will be at best a complicating factor and at worst an additional deadly threat. Finally, if it was all a ruse you could find yourself in serious legal jeopardy if any violent - or deadly - outcomes ensue.
      - mwint 4y ago
        In free states, it’s common and not a big deal to tell dispatchers & police that you’re armed. Usually the cops will just ask where your weapon is, then say “cool, don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you”. Not a big deal. They’re generally not concerned about people who voluntarily surrender their element of surprise.
        rsync 4y ago
        The world doesn’t always play out perfectly the way you’ve imagined it - even in “free states”. You’re rolling the dice with that behavior and I hope you never come up snake eyes.
        ghaff 4y ago

arka2147483647 4y ago

Is there any way that you could filter our bad faith stealing requests by stalkers? Eg, put tracker named backbag on victim, reguest full tracking on bagpack. I cant see how you could remotely filter for that?

edderly 4y ago

The obvious first thought is that any implementation for tracking should be open source and be backed by a publicly available standard.

notriddle 4y ago
It’s a poorly-conceived first thought. How does having the source code protect someone against a tracking bug hidden underneath their car? Is a stalking victim supposed to upload a modified firmware to a computer they don’t have physical access to, and might not even know exists? Or do you figure that giving more power to the person deploying the computer, the perpetrator, is somehow going to help the people they victimize?
- edderly 4y ago
  I suspect you're over indexing on what what a person being stalked would do with code. The source code is a tool, and it can become clear to people outside of the corporate interests what the security model or lack thereof is. I'm curious whether you think there is any benefit for tracking technology to be proprietary.

causality0 4y ago

As someone who owns half a dozen Tiles, one of the reasons Tile had its lunch eaten by AirTags is the persistent disconnect between Tile management and their audience. You created a product that appeals most to techies and hackers and then buried it in anti-consumer nonsense. Normies can't tell the difference, but we notice when you charge for things that don't cost you any money to provide. Before AirTags I used to give a lot of Tiles as Christmas and birthday gifts. I don't know a single person who saw you trying to charge three dollars a month for the app to notify you of loss of signal and didn't go "Oh my God, go fuck yourself".

jhloa2 4y ago

I don’t see how your solution really fixes anything as the device would still have to be found for there to be any consequences. It seems like it might help with the blatant attempts described in the article where an AirTag was slipped into someone’s pocket, but I would probably never find a well hidden device glued to my car. I hope you do find a good solution though because I don’t want to pay a monthly subscription for a gps tracker for theft protection on my motorcycle. It would be nice to just be able to drop in a tile or AirTag and forget about it until I needed jt

gjsman-1000 4y ago

This is painful, but it is worth considering that "outliers" so far have meant 1 person dead from an AirTag, as well as a few dozen stalking incidents. I believe anti-stalking features should be added, but there needs to be balance and also perspective on the safety of things. It's easy to focus on those people who were injured, forgetting the perspective that in general, these trackers are very safe. - How many people are killed from cars every year? Drunk driving? - 1,000 children are injured in California alone every year from pencils. Some have died. As I've said elsewhere, you are more likely to die from a pencil than a shark. - Over 1 million people land in the Emergency Room every year for a stair-related accident. Over 12,000 die. - 12 people die from taking selfies every year. - 450 people die from falling out of bed every year. - 150 people die every year from having a coconut fall on their head. - 7,000 people die every year from a doctor's sloppy handwriting on the prescription. - 2,500 left-handed people die every year from using right-handed tools. - 29 people die every year from being buried alive by accident. All of these are things we don't consider dangerous, and would often happily give our children or teenagers. Thus, while anti-stalking features of a kind should be added (an alarm if left alone too long?), we shouldn't dwell on too few people. Many of these issues kill far, far more people and we just can't avoid it - we can't force people to not take selfies, or doctors to always have perfect handwriting, or open every grave every day following for a week. Attempting to mitigate every weird cause of death is not possible and would require totalitarianism.

shapefrog 4y ago

You should probably have passed on this one. Everyone is up in arms about the apple tracker, not your one which is nearly identical. Take the win!

giaour 4y ago
AirTags are actively tracked by every iPhone. That’s a pretty big difference!
InTheArena 4y ago
no, far worse. If someone is tracking you on a tile there is zero protection - android or iphone that someone has unless they installed the scan and search app, which was only available in march this year - _years_ after the product was introduced.

cr3ative 4y ago

You appear to have just invented Trusted Stalkers. This is worse, not better.