X-Mode and SafeGraph didn’t respond to requests for comment. Department of Defense, and SafeGraph has sold location data to the CDC, according to public records. X-Mode has sold location data to the U.S. “Cuebiq does not sell data to law enforcement agencies or provide raw data feeds to government partners (unlike others, such as X-Mode and SafeGraph).”
“The CDC only exports aggregate, privacy-safe analytics for research purposes, which completely anonymizes any individual user data,” Daddi said. Cuebiq, which receives raw location data from Life360, has publicly disclosed its partnership with the CDC to track “mobility trends” related to the COVID-19 pandemic. X-Mode, SafeGraph, and Cuebiq are known location data companies that supply data and insights gleaned from that data to other industry players, as well as customers like hedge funds or firms that deal in targeted advertising.Ĭuebiq spokesperson Bill Daddi said in an email that the company doesn’t sell raw location data but provides access to an aggregated set of data through its “Workbench” tool to customers including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 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. Data partners are only publicly disclosed when partners request transparency or there’s “a particular reason to do so,” Hulls said.
#LIFE360 APP WRONG LOCATION FULL#
Hulls declined to disclose a full list of Life360’s data customers and declined to confirm that Safegraph is among them, citing confidentiality clauses, which he said are in the majority of its business contracts. There are potentially more companies that benefit from Life360’s data based on those partners’ customers. The former Life360 employee also told us Safegraph was among the buyers, which was confirmed by an email from a Life360 executive that was viewed by The Markup. The Markup was able to confirm with a former Life360 employee and a former employee of X-Mode that X-Mode-in addition to Cuebiq and Allstate’s Arity, which the company discloses in its privacy policy-is among the companies that Life360 sells data to. There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location DataĪ huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’s movements Septem08:00 ET A former Cuebiq employee joked that the company wouldn’t be able to run its marketing campaigns without Life360’s constant flow of location data.
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“We see data as an important part of our business model that allows us to keep the core Life360 services free for the majority of our users, including features that have improved driver safety and saved numerous lives.”Ī former X-Mode engineer said the raw location data the company received from Life360 was among X-Mode’s most valuable offerings due to the sheer volume and precision of the data.
“We have no means to confirm or deny the accuracy” of whether Life360 is among the largest sources of data for the industry, Life360 founder and CEO Chris Hulls said in an emailed response to questions from The Markup. All of them described Life360 as one of the largest sources of data for the industry. They said they agreed to talk because of concerns with the location data industry’s security and privacy and a desire to shed more light on the opaque location data economy. The former employees spoke with The Markup on the condition that we not use their names, as they are all still employed in the data industry.
Through interviews with two former employees of the company, along with two individuals who formerly worked at location data brokers Cuebiq and X-Mode, The Markup discovered that the app acts as a firehose of data for a controversial industry that has operated in the shadows with few safeguards to prevent the misuse of this sensitive information. The Markup has learned, however, that the app is selling data on kids’ and families’ whereabouts to approximately a dozen data brokers who have sold data to virtually anyone who wants to buy it. Life360, a popular family safety app used by 33 million people worldwide, has been marketed as a great way for parents to track their children’s movements using their cellphones.
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