Tile Trackers

Tile is the OG maker of Bluetooth trackers. So this year when Apple came out with their Airtags, Tile had to do their best to keep up. Apple could tap into their vast Find My network of nearly a billion Apple devices to make Airtag locating just about anywhere a reality. In response, Airtag joined up with Amazon Sidewalk to expand their community network (at least in the US, Amazon Sidewalk doesn’t work outside the US) to all those supported Echo and Ring devices out there in the world, seriously expanding their locating network. Fortunately, so far the privacy and security of Amazon Sidewalk looks promising according to privacy watchdog EFF.

This is all great for people who have lost things outside of Bluetooth range. It’s maybe not so great for people worried about potentially being stalked or unknowingly tracked by someone with bad intentions. While Apple seems to have incorporated protections to help prevent stalking and abuse of their Airtags, we can’t confirm Tile has taken the same threats as seriously. That is a concern for sure.

Tile does seem to do OK with protecting your data. Tile does not sell or monetize consumer data, which is great. Tile does say they may share anonymized data they collect about you with third parties, including advertisers,. This is generally OK, although we should point out that many privacy researchers claim it can be relatively easy to de-anonymize such data, especially location data.

So, what’s the worst that could happen with Tile’s trackers? It’s pretty scary to think someone could unknowingly slip a Tile tracker in your car and use it to stalk you all over the US thanks to the big Amazon Sidewalk community network.