by Liv Provosty
The conversation surrounding data collection concerns has become more mainstream. It is no longer confined to conspiracy theorists worried about being chipped and tracked by governments or powerful corporate entities. With the advancement of location tracking software on cell phones and wearable devices, we have purchased the “chip” willingly. As technology has changed, so has our society’s desire for more information, but this access to information does not begin and end with the individuals we allow in our connected cloud. When was the last time you saw a privacy policy on your computer screen? Did you read it? Did you care to read it? The data one signs away in a privacy policy is often an after thought, justified by practical purposes of location tracking technology. Location tracking is a valuable technological advancement for navigation purposes and distress signaling, however it is crucial to examine location tracking’s potentially manipulative consequences and issues of consenting to “the eye in the sky” application Life360.
Understanding Life360
Life360 is a smartphone application that claims to enable location safety, driving safety, digital safety, and emergency assistance. With three tiers of membership ascending in price from silver, gold, then platinum, Life360 offers safety options in tiers of how much safety users are willinging to purchase. Specifically designed for families, Life360 provides parents with access to a week’s worth of location data at minimum as well as data on driving and phone battery percentage. This access to data is marketed as an access to safety. It follows a notion that every parent wants their child to be safe, therefore every parent should track their child to guarantee safety. One slogan reads “Know where they are without asking” and shows a smiling fifteen year old, presumably leaving his high school. In an application designed to ease parental worries, the parents are the ones making the choices in terms of giving consent for location data collection. Minors do not necessarily have the right to give consent for their own tracking. Some parents may argue if they bought the phone for their child then as parents they should have authority regarding location tracking. However, as with other modes of parental control, cunning teenagers always find ways to resist.
The Kids are Not Alright (with being tracked by Life360)
The most direct backlash from teenagers to being tracked was found on the popular application, TikTok. The majority of TikTok users are GenZ and, like many other companies, Life360 also has a presence on TikTok. TikTok CEO, Chis Hulls, faced very direct backlash from young people who had negative experiences regarding Life360. The hashtag #banlife360 reached seventy five million views on TikTok. Led by teen user, Drew Polenske, a viral campaign, summoned other teenagers to bombard the app with negative reviews dramatically shifting the app’s ranking on the Apple Store from 4.7 to 2.6. This drop got the attention of Chris Hulls and, in an untraditional twist, he hired Drew Polenske as a consultant signaling for reconciliation within the community of enraged youth. Hulls sought Polenske’s advice for application improvements and Hulls published content geared directly towards disgruntled TikTok users. The overwhelming shared sentiment under the #banlife360 was regarding the way the application is used as a means of parental control, which led to the addition of the “Bubble” feature that offers a more generalized zone of your location. While this is not a hugely significant change, it was a great public relations and marketing move by Hulls to meet teenagers where they are, TikTok. However, this move on Hull’s behalf was a mode of co-opting the resistance movement and instead of continuing to resist control, Polenske became an agent of control through his Life360 consulting role.
Should Anyone Be Alright (with being tracked by Life360)
Teenagers had their own concerns regarding location tracking on Life360. But should the more willing participants also have some concerns regarding the privacy of their location data? In December of 2021 news broke that Life360 was selling precise location data of approximately thirty three million users. User data from Life360 was sold to location data companies, X-Mode, SafeGraph, and Cuebiq and what those companies may have done with the data is beyond a Life360 user’s control. Both Cuebiq and SafeGraph operate in connection with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while X-Mode sells data to the United States Department of Defense who have a history of military contracting. In addition to those business relations, location data was also sold by Life360 to firms dealing with target advertising.
Although these data transactions are not inherently being used for insidious purposes, the greater issue is that the average user is unaware that these transactions are even occurring and does one ever really know what intentions of are “the eye in the sky” at all. Recently, as of January 2022, Life360 announced “a new data partnership” that “significantly advances privacy initiatives.” The deals with data companies, X-Mode, SafeGraph, and Cuebiq have since been dropped. Although those companies may still have several years worth of past data and locations in their possession. At present Life360 is working with two data collection agencies: Placer.ai and Arity, which are owned by the insurance company, AllState. Arity’s precise location data is used to track car usage and car crashed, demonstrating how insurance companies also value location tracking as an asset for evaluating young drivers Placer.ai commonly uses location data for vehicle traffic, web traffic, and purchase data. Life360 made no comment on whether the Placer.ai data would be precise and it is unclear if the data sold has any clear connection to safety features or if it is being used strictly by the company as a means of building revenue off of users.
Concluding Thoughts
All of this information can feel overwhelming and difficult to understand for an individual unfamiliar with the world of data collection. Perhaps this world of data literacy is kept difficult to understand for a reason. Location data is an asset individuals create, but once we do so, it quickly vanishes from our perception. In the age of simultaneously playing the role of consumer and the product, it is important to evaluate which role one values more and what privacy sacrifices one is willing to make, for oneself and for the young people one may track.
