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Comment by missedthecue | Hacker News Reader

Think about this for just half a second though -- What would be the value in buying location data on someone's Tile? Phone location data is valuable because it tells you where a human being with a wallet is.

If someone attaches a Tile to something (say their backpack), what's the use in buying that location data? Are you going to try to show location based ads to someone's backpack that they accidentally left in the library?

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You’ve missed the point - the Tile app agressively pushes users to enable always-on location, which is not the norm for iOS apps, so Tile knows where your phone is all the time.

It’s not about the bluetooth tags themselves.

After a half second of thought: A backpack is usually with a human with a wallet. So is a phone, but the phone may not be reporting its location, or at least not reporting it to you, so the Tile is an alternative way to get the person's location.

99% of the time it tells you where the tile's owner is.

"But couldn't you just get that data from their phone already?"

No, because the Tile is the reason those people have the phone app installed and give it location data permissions. I wouldn't expect that they're selling locations of individual Tile trackers (thought they very well might), the more resellable data that Life360 gets here is access to the locations of all Tile owners.

well. if you know where the tile is for my car keys, my backpack, my wife's purse, whatever, but my phone is turned off.. then you probably still know where I am.

No but if a backpack gets close to the phone it would be an indication a person is about to leave. Could show a <insert coffee shop here> add. Not sure if it’s actually valuable but more info than phone moving around the house.

The Tile app is also installed on your devices. The tiles ping back to those devices. There's probably some play or other in that data.

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