Everyone is double dipping anymore. Pay for the app, but you're really the product being sold. Any app that can get location access is probably doing something you don't like with it. Your "Smart TV" is hoovering up as much as it can to send upstream (including using content recognition algorithms on the DVD and game console inputs), your "connected car" 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.
There's big money in this sort of backend data analytics... deception? deceit? Whatever you want to call it.
> 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.
You don't "accidentally" end up with a dozen data partners unless your goal is data collection and sale.
I'll offer a guiding principle that's been serving me well: If you can imagine how the data is being abused, it certainly is. If you can'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.
If I were cynical, I'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/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...
Would not surprise me if there were people in these businesses who thought, "why would we leave FREE money on the table?" A promotion or two later after palming off their customer's data to whoever had the cash handy, they're off to do the same at another business.
I think they're called MBAs but I don't think it's unique to that style of professional.
I've never fully understood the concept of " if you don't pay for the product, you are the product", when it did the rounds a couple of years ago. Like, does this just magically mean that if I pay for something they're not also doing the same thing anyway?
It would be "You are the product" regardless of whether you pay or not.
Agreed. Many unfortunate things arise from it, especially when the needle moves from basic interests to flat-out greed. Pervasive removal would be a seismic social shift. The “common wealth” was a capitalist concept at one time.
I'm disappointed in myself for being surprised by this article, you're exactly right about this being the norm for similar software. I've found Life360 to be a helpful free tool in many regards but as is so often the case, if you aren't paying for the product then you are the product.
> violating the spirit of "If you're not paying, you're the product."
I don't understand how anyone who has ever owned a television, ridden on a bus, or flown in an airplane would think that statement has ever carried any weight with anyone.
I use it right now and it gives 24/7 livetime location reporting as well as free driver reports (top speed, number of hard braking events). There are other features you can upgrade to, but it's definitely useable at a free tier.
Their secret sauce is that they have spent a lot of time and money innovating on how to not kill battery life. The app polls users for location on different intervals. Periodically if no one has the app open, but if someone opens the app it will start polling people whose locations are available to them. Find My Friends has a similar approach, although it ONLY polls when someone has Find My Friends open that has a shared location available, and it doesn't store the data (last I checked).
Abusing technology to gather and monetize data that reveals users' "pattern of life" used to be limited to tech companies. Now that the tech industry rot has spread into other traditionally unrelated industries the abuse becomes systemic. We are now seeing the results of the spreading rot as a fundamental shift in our economic system from capitalism based on mass-production and financialization into surveillance capitalism[1].
We are already seeing entire industries shift from their traditional business models into surveillance oriented data. After a critical mass of businesses pivot to surveillance capitalism, the rest of the market becomes strongly incentivized to also become a surveillance capitalism style business or risk being left behind unable to participate in the new market.
Thanks for reminding me, that book has been on my list of "I should get around to reading..." for a while. It's a long slog, but seems more and more relevant.
> There's big money in this sort of backend data analytics..
Which is kind of weird, when you think about it. Why is this information valuable to companies? And why is it so valuable that so many companies can make money selling effectively the same information?
It makes sense why government agencies, particularly the police would place a value on this information. But they also have so many ways of obtaining this data that they can't be willing to pay much for yet another source of location data.
Location data is very easy to capture so tons of apps and websites do it, so there is large volumes of it, which makes it very cheap. For example when I run ad campaigns location data in general is literally just free, and if I want precise data (users who have visited this location) it’s max $2 cpm (1 thousand uses).
If I’m spending a few million on an ad campaign, a few thousand for location data is very much worth it.
> If you can imagine how the data is being abused, it certainly is.
I can imagine all sorts of crazy nonsense, including shadowy forces like the FSB and the Mossad planning drone strikes based on my wife's wirelessly-phoning-home CPAP usage, and underworld killers and kidnappers being directed to customers with >$50,000 USD in their bank accounts.
... Or I can limit my imagination to the sort of stuff that actually happens. It's a lot less sexy, and most of it doesn't have any impact on my life, and I'd really like conversation about it to focus on the parts of it that do. There's plenty of that, without us having to resort to speculative fiction.
I consider things like "A Roku TV performing content analysis on inputs from external jacks, so it can report up what DVD I'm watching," to be data abuse. Same goes for them scanning my network (which their privacy policy grants them permission to do). It's something that isn't useful to me, with the product I paid for (actually, I don't own a Roku, their privacy policy is "We do what we want, sucker!"), but is "sneaking around behind me" to do something non-obvious.
It doesn't have to be international intrigue for me to be upset with what some bit of consumer electronics is doing with my data.
Everyone is double dipping anymore. Pay for the app, but you're really the product being sold. Any app that can get location access is probably doing something you don't like with it. Your "Smart TV" is hoovering up as much as it can to send upstream (including using content recognition algorithms on the DVD and game console inputs), your "connected car" 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.
There's big money in this sort of backend data analytics... deception? deceit? Whatever you want to call it.
> 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.
You don't "accidentally" end up with a dozen data partners unless your goal is data collection and sale.
I'll offer a guiding principle that's been serving me well: If you can imagine how the data is being abused, it certainly is. If you can'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.