Life360 sells location data from its customers, and while the company says it won't do so with Tile, the potential for selling location data in the future is concerning to us. However, it also brings up security concerns for those trusting important forms of ID to Life360, Tile’s parent company as of 2021. This process is designed to deter Tile owners from using the devices for illegal activity, like stalking, through a lack of anonymity. Tile requires anyone setting up Anti-Theft Mode to go through a rigorous identification verification process, including providing government-issued ID and biometric verification. This would make it more difficult for thieves to find the Tile on the item they’ve stolen and remove it. In February 2023, Tile rolled out a new feature called Anti-Theft Mode, which is supposed to make it easier to find a stolen item with a Tile attached to it by hiding its presence notification when someone scans for nearby Tiles. Tile Premium is an unnecessary expense for most people, but Premium Protect may be worth the investment if you’re tracking something valuable. For $100 a year, Tile also offers Premium Protect, which has the same features plus a $1,000-per-year reimbursement for ( most) registered items that are lost. (The last feature is based on entering your home address, and in our testing we could get a third of a mile away before receiving the alert, which isn’t super handy.) Aside from separation notifications, Apple doesn’t provide any of these features with an AirTag. On the software side, it offers a 30-day location history, unlimited sharing of your Tile trackers’ locations, and smart alerts that let you know when you’ve left home without any of your Tiles. The service includes free battery replacements shipped to you each year (for the Tile Mate and the Tile Pro), an extended warranty (from one year to three), and SMS-based support. Tile offers Tile Premium, an optional, $3-per-month (or $30-per-year) subscription plan that covers as many Tiles as you own. If they do so, that would expand Tile’s crowd-finding network by up to 10x. In fall 2022, Tile opened its network up to parent company Life360’s 42 million smartphone users, who can choose to opt in to help Tile members find their trackers. According to the company’s figures, however, “millions of items” are found daily, and of those marked as lost, Tile says 90% are found. So the total number of Tile units that make up its crowd-finding network is a tiny fraction of Apple’s. That doesn’t mean all of them are currently active, and a big portion likely aren’t early Tile trackers didn’t have replaceable batteries, which meant the entire device had to be replaced annually. Tile tells us it has sold more than 50 million trackers. If your phone is no longer at that location-or if you’re worried that it won’t be-you can mark the item as lost, which invokes Tile’s crowd-finding feature. If your Tile is out of Bluetooth range, you can view a map displaying its location the last time your phone made contact with it. An app that is easy to navigate and updates location information quickly is important too. We also prefer trackers that can trigger an alarm on your phone. Other features: A replaceable battery isn’t absolutely required, but it’s a big plus.Despite having little space for a speaker, some of these can get quite loud. Volume: If you’re near your tracker but can’t hear it, that’s no good.Range: The longer the range, the farther you can be from the tracker and still be able to find your lost item.Size: A tracker that’s too obtrusive to carry around with you or to attach to the thing you want to track is useless.Trackers use a combination of physical speakers and digital apps to help you locate your belongings. Precision finding: Once you know the general location of your lost tracker, narrowing down exactly where it’s hiding is the key to finding it. The more people who use a platform, the better your chances of recovering your lost stuff.
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