Tile Is Adding a Literal SOS Button on Its Trackers

Tile trackers person an unusual reputation. For one, they’ve agelong been Apple’s main rival for its AirTag Bluetooth trackers. At the aforesaid time, those tags person tally up against accusations they facilitate stalking, adjacent much than Apple’s ultra-popular tracker. Device shaper Life360’s latest Tile trackers now person a fastener to alert your friends if “something is wrong.”

The caller trackers person a multi-function fastener that tin alert the users’ friends and the SOS relation successful the Tile app if “something is wrong.” Press the fastener 3 times, and it volition nonstop a notification describing your exigency to contacts designated successful the Life360 app. If you privation your tracker to interaction exigency services for you without needing to dial 911, you’ll request to wage for a Gold oregon Platinum Life360 app subscription for $15 oregon $25 a month. Those subscriptions besides nett you a escaped tracker and different benefits similar clang detection.

The institution unveiled its archetypal caller trackers since Life360 archetypal bought up the brand successful 2021. They see a $25 Tile Mate and a $35 Tile Pro with a louder ringing and a 500-foot scope compared to the erstwhile Pro’s 400-foot range. There’s an further wallet-sized Tile Slim and a $25 Tile Sticker. As the sanction suggests, the sticker tin purportedly connect to thing and let for Bluetooth tracking connected practically anything. 

Ever wanted to way where you enactment your portable powerfulness bank? The sticker mightiness beryllium a bully option. All of them are disposable starting Monday. The SOS features look interesting, but contempt the caller built-in panic, it won’t bash overmuch to halt the accusations that Tile has been beauteous lax with its anti-tracking efforts.

© Image: Tile

Tile has been on-again and off-again successful its efforts to deter stalking with its trackers. The institution rolled retired anti-tracking software backmost successful 2022. Like Apple’s AirTag scanning, the “Scan and Secure” diagnostic lets Life360 users hunt for unwanted tags connected their person, though you request to spell done the app. The institution past implemented different diagnostic that allowed users to marque their tags invisible, hiding the trackers from its ain scans. To alteration the invisible trackers, users needed to connection up biometric information and consent to a imaginable $1 cardinal suit if they were convicted of stalking. At the time, Life360 claimed the loophole successful its anti-stalking inaugural was to assistance users retrieve stolen items.

“Unlike competitors similar Airtags and upcoming products compatible with the Google Find My Device Network, Tile doesn’t alert thieves if they bargain an point with 1 of our trackers,” Tile claims successful its property merchandise astir its Anti-Theft mode.

Last year, 2 women successful Texas who accidental they were stalked with the assistance of a Tile tracker helped file a people enactment lawsuit against the company. The brace of alleged stalking victims claimed the tracker shaper “marketed its merchandise some explicitly and implicitly for the intent of tracking people—particularly women.” In response, Tile says it does not condone stalking with its trackers and works with instrumentality enforcement erstwhile those cases harvest up. The institution besides claimed astatine the clip it had received nary reports of misuse of its anti-theft mode. That case is ongoing, and Tile’s attorneys has argued that the lawsuit should beryllium moved into arbitration.

So the caller tags inactive don’t assistance anybody acrophobic they’re being hounded with the assistance of a Tile tracker. Still, for galore people—especially women—who dread electronically-enabled stalking, past it could beryllium a substantial, though incredibly ironic, bid of mind.