Surveillance culture is bleak. Just this weekend I saw this charming animated ditty pitching self-described 'Family Safety App' Life360, in which a mother sings about all the awful things that could happen to her child and location tracking is proffered as a panacea. Blegh. Even worse, a recent US court ruling involving Life360's own corporate child Tile doesn't exactly leave me feeling safe and sound. Tile is a Bluetooth tracker company that Life360 acquired in 2021. A class-action lawsuit filed back in 2023 alleged that Tile had been negligent in how it implemented anti-stalking safeguards (via The Register). This case is still ongoing, but a recent appeal from Tile and Life360 has seen a US court rule that use of a device or service can imply consent to its terms of service.The 2023 suit was originally brought after Tile trackers had allegedly been used by third-parties to stalk the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs assert they had not consented to Tile's terms of service that were updated in October 2023. Parts of the updated terms regarded the handling of arbitration, which is why the October 2023 terms are in the legal spotlight for this appeal.Notice of the update to the TOS was sent to all account holders, informing users via email that if they continued to use Life360's or Tile's apps or websites after November 26, 2023, they would be effectively agreeing to the October 2023 terms.One plaintiff only found the notice email in her spam folder in January 2024. Another claims to have never seen the email, only downloading and using the Tile app to "use the Scan and Secure feature to locate her alleged stalker’s Tile Tracker."
This context, as horrifying as it is, offered little obstacle to legal precedent though. As such, the court found that both plaintiffs "unambiguously manifested assent to the Oct. 2023 Terms through their continued use of the Tile App."Many folks use Bluetooth trackers for purposes other than surveillance or stalking, ie to find their misplaced keys or lost luggage. However, even in far from dubious use cases like these examples, Bluetooth trackers may not actually keep you or your belongings all that safe. For instance last year, Georgia Tech researchers published a paper that found Tile trackers can leak identifying information in plain text.
