Fostering Trust and Safety

By Kirsten Daru, General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, Life360

I could not be more honored to join Life360 as the company’s Chief Privacy Officer. It’s an incredible opportunity to continue to push forward on a topic I’m passionate about – the responsible use of data. So it is only fitting that today is International Data Privacy Day.

I’ve spent the last 12 years working to establish and advance best practices related to this topic, first at Electronic Arts and for the last two+ years at Tile. What I’ve learned is that transparency and choice are fundamental principles that need to be woven into a company’s day-to-day operations. These principles foster understanding and trust by putting you, as the consumer, in the position to be the ultimate arbiter of how – and if – your data will be used. 

Life360 was already committed to these principles, and I am committed to carrying them forward and building upon them. Practically speaking, this means that you should expect even more transparency about our data practices and continue to have the opportunity to make important choices with respect to how your data is used and processed.  

Importantly, it’s incumbent upon us to clearly show the innovative ways that data is used within our product, and the tangible benefits that it can provide for you as our Members. Just a few examples to help bring this to life – we have:

• monitored over 10 billion miles of driving, and dispatched over 15,000 ambulances to real Life360 customers after detecting they were in a crash.

• saved hundreds of lives through our SOS service, which is used in emergency situations around the globe.

• improved privacy through features such as “Bubbles” which allow you to share your approximate location with Circle members, while still allowing their location to be shared with Life360 to power the services that keep them safe.

Looking forward, we will maintain a thoughtful, iterative approach about the kind of data that we need in order to continue to offer innovative services that foster togetherness and safety. 

We recognize that aggregated data analytics (e.g. 500 people visited the Statue of Liberty on Saturday) is the wave of the future, and that businesses will increasingly place a premium on valuable data insights that do not rely on device or user-level identifiers.  Life360 intends to be a leader in harnessing the power of aggregated data to benefit society, while at the same time upholding your privacy as our members.  

Consistent with these intentions – while we have been having discussions and exploring options to achieve these goals for some time – we’ve recently entered into a new privacy-centric data services agreement with a prominent provider of anonymized aggregated analytics for the retail ecosystem. They will provide critical data insights and analytics services to Life360, which will enhance the product experience for you as our members. This partnership is the first step toward Life360 winding down our traditional data brokerage business. As a result, Life360 will enable carefully aggregated insights about places generated via our partnership to be leveraged by third parties. It is also worth noting that Life360 remains committed to the promise that Tile and Jiobit data will not be sold – even in aggregated form – so, Tile and Jiobit device data is excluded from this new partnership.  

In the meantime, we encourage all of our members to explore our in-app privacy center (click on Settings > Privacy & Security) where you can make important choices about how your information is used, stored, processed and shared. In line with our principles of transparency and choice, you will have the option to exclude themselves from the analytics program once that data protection partnership goes live. You can also view our full privacy policy at any time right here or read our post on how we keep your data safe.

It’s wonderful to be part of an organization that is so committed to principles that foster responsible behavior towards data. This commitment opens the door to endless possibilities of how to safely leverage data and technology to improve the human experience. And that’s a future we can all get excited about.