Life360 told 50 million families it "does not sell personal information." The FTC found Life360 sold the precise GPS coordinates of 32 million people -- including their children -- to a dozen data brokers. Cuebiq, X-Mode, Arity (owned by Allstate), SafeGraph. Every few minutes, 24 hours a day, the app pinged the exact location of every family member, including kids walking to school. Life360's own internal audits showed the data brokers were not complying with the rules. Life360 kept selling anyway. The FTC banned the company from ever selling location data again. A family safety app was one of the largest suppliers in the data broker industry. The Markup investigated where data brokers get their data. Life360 -- the family safety app -- was one of their largest suppliers. Former employees told reporters that selling location data was not a side hustle. It was the business model. CEO Chris Hulls said the data was "anonymized." Researchers have proven repeatedly that location data cannot be anonymized -- if someone sleeps at one address and works at another, they're identified. One of Life360's buyers, X-Mode Social, was later banned by the FTC for selling data that tracked people to abortion clinics and domestic violence shelters. The app parents installed to protect their children was fueling an industry that could stalk them.
What they claim: Life360 promotes its driving safety features -- crash detection, speed alerts, driving reports -- as tools to "keep your family safe on the road" and help teen drivers improve.
What we found: Life360 sold driving behavior data -- speed, hard braking events, phone usage while driving, trip routes -- to Arity, a data analytics subsidiary of Allstate Insurance. Arity uses driving behavior data to help insurance companies set premiums and assess risk. Parents monitoring their teenager's driving to keep them safe were unknowingly feeding data to insurance companies that could raise the family's premiums. A teenager's hard braking event, recorded by Life360 and sold to Arity, could affect insurance rates. Life360 did not clearly disclose that driving safety data was being sold to insurance industry data brokers. The company marketed driving features as parental safety tools while monetizing them as insurance risk assessments.
What they claim: Life360 described its $205 million acquisition of Tile in November 2021 as creating "the world's leading platform for finding people, pets, and things" focused on safety and convenience.
What we found: Life360 acquired Tile -- a Bluetooth tracker company with its own history of aggressive data collection and third-party sharing -- for $205 million in November 2021. The acquisition combined Life360's GPS tracking network (50 million users) with Tile's Bluetooth tracking network (tens of millions of Tile devices), creating one of the largest consumer location tracking platforms in the world. Tile had previously been criticized for sharing Bluetooth location data with third parties. The merger happened while Life360 was under scrutiny for selling location data to brokers. The combined platform could now track people through GPS (Life360 app), Bluetooth proximity (Tile network), and indoor positioning -- a surveillance capability that previously required law enforcement resources. Life360 framed the acquisition as consumer convenience while building a tracking apparatus of unprecedented scale.
What they claim: Life360 promotes features like the "panic button," crash detection, and location sharing as essential safety tools that families cannot afford to be without.
What we found: Life360's design creates psychological dependency: the panic button and crash detection features make removing the app feel like removing a safety net, even after users learn about data sales. The app requests permissions for continuous background location, contacts, phone state, camera, microphone, and Bluetooth -- far beyond what a location sharing app requires. Teens and young adults report on Reddit, TikTok, and in media interviews that Life360 is used as a surveillance and control tool by parents, with some describing it as enabling emotional abuse. Communities of teenagers share methods to spoof GPS locations to escape constant monitoring. The app's design deliberately ties surveillance to safety, making it psychologically difficult to uninstall even when users object to the tracking.
What they claim: Life360's privacy policy stated the company "does not sell personal information" and described location data sharing as "anonymized" and used only to "improve the service."
What we found: The FTC charged Life360 with selling precise location data of approximately 32 million users -- including children -- to data brokers without adequate consent (January 2024). The FTC consent order banned Life360 from selling, licensing, or sharing precise location data. The FTC found Life360 failed to ensure data brokers deleted or de-identified data as claimed. Life360's own internal audits revealed brokers were not complying with contractual restrictions. The company continued selling data even after learning brokers were misusing it. Life360 sold data to approximately a dozen brokers including Cuebiq, X-Mode Social, Arity (an Allstate subsidiary), and SafeGraph.
What they claim: Life360 states it complies with COPPA and obtains parental consent for collecting children's location data, presenting itself as a responsible steward of family data.
What we found: Life360 is primarily marketed as a family tracking app -- parents install it specifically to monitor their children. The app tracks children's movements 24/7: exact GPS coordinates updated every few minutes, driving speed, battery level, complete location history. This children's location data was included in bulk data sales to brokers. Under COPPA, parental consent for Life360's own use does not extend to selling children's precise location data to a dozen third-party data brokers. Data brokers receiving this data could determine where children go to school, what routes they walk, when they're home alone, where they play, and their daily schedules. The FTC's consent order specifically addressed the inadequacy of Life360's consent mechanisms for data sharing involving minors.
What they claim: Life360 markets itself as "the #1 family safety app" focused on giving families "peace of mind" through location sharing and safety features.
What we found: The Markup investigation by Jon Keegan and Alfred Ng (December 2021) revealed Life360 was one of the largest sources of location data for the entire data broker industry. Former Life360 employees confirmed to The Markup that data sales were a primary revenue source, not a side business. CEO Chris Hulls initially defended the practice, claiming data was "anonymized" -- researchers have repeatedly shown location data cannot be meaningfully anonymized. X-Mode Social (now Outlogic), one of Life360's buyers, was separately banned by the FTC for selling location data that could track people to abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters, and places of worship. The app marketed as family safety was feeding an industry that could track people to their most vulnerable moments.
What they claim: Life360 CEO Chris Hulls defended data sales to The Markup by stating the data was "anonymized" and could not be used to identify individual users.
What we found: Academic research has repeatedly demonstrated that precise location data cannot be meaningfully anonymized. A 2013 MIT study (de Montjoye et al.) showed that just four spatiotemporal data points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of individuals. A person who sleeps at one address and works at another is identified by their home and workplace. Life360's data included location pings every few minutes, 24/7, for years -- vastly more than the four points needed for identification. The FTC's own findings confirmed that Life360 failed to ensure brokers actually anonymized or deleted data. SafeGraph, one of Life360's buyers, sold location data precise enough to track individual visitors to specific buildings. The claim of anonymization was scientifically false when Hulls made it and had been proven false for nearly a decade.