Life360

Is Life360 safe?

Life360 is safe in the sense that it works and is not malware. The catch is what it is: a company holding a live record of where every member of your family goes, all day. That data has been sold before. In 2021 The Markup reported that Life360 was selling precise location data on its users, including children, to about a dozen data brokers, and in 2024 it had two separate data exposures. We score it 46/100.

The app had 95.8 million monthly users at the end of 2025, and parents are its main customers. That makes children's location the most sensitive thing it holds.

Does Life360 sell location data?

It used to, and openly. Former employees and staff at the data brokers Cuebiq and X-Mode told The Markup in December 2021 that Life360 was one of the largest sources of raw location data in the industry, whose brokers sold data to virtually anyone who wanted to buy it. Chief executive Chris Hulls said data was "an important part of our business model" that kept the core service free.

In January 2022 Life360 said it would end all precise location deals except with Allstate's Arity, and sell only aggregated data to the analytics firm Placer.ai. Its latest annual report says it earns money from "the sale of data insights derived from the personal data we collect from our members", about 7% of revenue in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025, and from aggregated, non-personally identifiable data and in-app advertising.

The App Store label tells you the rest. It lists identifiers as used to track you, and links precise location, name, email, device IDs and fitness data to you for third-party advertising. That is a long list for a family safety app.

The 2024 data breaches

Two incidents surfaced in 2024:

1. Tile support platform. In March, Life360 said a criminal had emailed claiming to hold Tile customer data and tried to extort the company. The attacker had accessed a Tile customer support platform and taken names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and Tile device IDs. Life360 said passwords, payment cards and location data were not on that system.
2. Login API. In July, a seller offered data on 442,519 Life360 users, scraped through a flaw in a login endpoint that returned phone numbers in the background. Names, email addresses and phone numbers were exposed. Life360 fixed the endpoint.

Neither leak included location history. Both showed weak spots in a company whose whole value is a sensitive data set.

Tile trackers and stalking

Life360 owns Tile, a deal it announced in 2021. Small Bluetooth trackers help find keys, and they can also be slipped into someone's bag. In 2023 a group of plaintiffs sued Tile, Life360 and Amazon, alleging Tile trackers were used to follow them without consent. In 2025 the court dismissed the original plaintiffs' claims and paused the rest pending an appeal over arbitration. These are allegations, not findings.

The design is the larger problem. Researchers who shared their work with Wired in 2025 found that Tile tags broadcast a fixed, unencrypted MAC address, so anyone with a Bluetooth scanner can follow a tag over time. Apple, Google and Samsung rotate and encrypt their tracker signals. Tile also offers Anti-Theft Mode, which hides a tag from Tile's "Scan and Secure" check for unknown trackers. To switch it on, owners must upload photo ID and agree to a $1 million penalty if convicted of stalking. The EFF argues that only helps once a stalker is caught. Life360 told Wired it had made improvements but did not say what.

How to use Life360 more safely

1. Share with the fewest people that works. Each Circle member sees your live location.
2. If you live in a US state with a privacy law, or in the EU or UK, use Life360's privacy request options to opt out of sale and sharing or to delete old data.
3. On iPhone, choose "Ask App Not to Track", and leave a Circle when you no longer need it rather than letting sharing run on.
4. For teenagers, agree on the rules openly. Secret tracking damages trust and teaches children that surveillance is normal.
5. If you suspect someone is tracking you, check your phone for Life360, look at which Circles you are in, and run your phone's unknown tracker scan, plus Tile's own scan.
6. Use a unique password and turn on two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary if your account offers it.

How we scored it

Privacy (32) is the weakest factor: precise location linked to you for advertising, a history of selling it, and ongoing data-insights revenue. Security (42) reflects two 2024 exposures and Tile's unencrypted broadcasts. Scams and harmful content (55) and the regulatory record (68) are middling, since the risks are misuse and stalking rather than fines. Snapchat, whose Snap Map also shares friends' locations, scores 50.