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Comment by crhulls | Hacker News Reader

I am very open to being wrong and changing course, but let's have a data-driven decision.

When we launched our anti-theft feature, we were clear that if we found there was widespread abuse, we would change course. We have had literally zero complaints of anyone being stalked with a device where anti-theft was enabled.

And I think you are misunderstanding the new standards. Google and Apple will proactively notify thieves of nearby trackers, and allow a thief to disable it. This is next level bad for anyone relying on their tracking device to protect against theft.

What is the data that would change your mind? I would change my mind if we found that more than .1% of our customers were abusing this feature.

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How is it an anti-theft device if the thief doesn’t know it’s there?

I could see this being used in the aggregate to ascertain drop off points or chop shops, but at an individual level it doesn’t stop your stuff from being stolen. Even the aggregate case requires buy in from law enforcement to actually act on the information which is not a small thing.

Sure, I agree with that. We did user testing and people understood the concept. It is anti-theft in the sense you have a real chance of getting your stuff back, unlike with AirTags and now Google network devices where thieves will just disable the tracker.

As a personal bias, I believe companies like yours are pathologically unable to do the right thing. Take my reply with that in mind.

I carefully examined life360.com, trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody who was stalked, magically divined that life360 was involved, and wanted to report the issue. The extent of my options on life360.com are:

1. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

And that's it. There does not exist a "contact us" or other general mechanism, and there certainly does not exist an abuse reporting mechanism. If that happens to exist behind other filters or paywalls then it's not relevant when discussing how the average customer would interact with your website.

With that in mind, I would expect an exactly 0% abuse rate regardless of how abusive your product actually is. You confirm that number. I'm not surprised.

The ball is in your court. How do you prove to the world that you _actually_ care about abuse? How _should_ a real abusee interact with your website? Why isn't it obvious? What are the exact numbers? And so on...

We have a member protection link at the bottom of our page - it is not buried. https://www.life360.com/member-protection-resources/

We encourage people to first go to the police, and we work with law enforcement to help bring criminals to justice on a regular basis.

That link specifically dissuades anyone who is a victim from contacting your company. It directs them to contact police or a lawyer, and you provide no ability in that link to contact your company.

Going to law enforcement is the way to resolve this. The company can then disclose the identity of the owner to law enforcement.

Really puts the "we've had zero reports" in context though, doesn't it?

I take that to mean there were zero law enforcement reports. Going to law enforcement is always your port of call when dealing with any sort of criminal activity happening as it relates to a tech company. Even Apple says this as it relates to AirTags.

Think about it for a second. If anyone could contact a tech company to get people's information based on a serial number, this would be abused by people who could steal your phone, airpods, or bag containing an airtag, claim to be stalked, contact the manufacturer directly, and get your home address from the manufacturer by giving them the serial number.

"If you feel your safety is at risk, you can contact your local law enforcement, who can work with Apple. You might need to provide the AirTag or its serial number."

https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/stay-safe-wi...

> We have had literally zero complaints of anyone being stalked with a device where anti-theft was enabled.

First, it's highly likely that someone being stalked wouldn't realize a tile device was the cause. Secondly, you said Tile and Life360 are on only 12% of devices. So maybe 1 out of 10 stalkers will be successful in using your device to stalk. That's not enough data to state so conclusively that this doesn't happen. I'm sure if Tile was more popular (and thus more functional) and more stalkers knew they were the best devices for stalking, they would use them.

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