Life360 is safe for everyday family location sharing, with one real asterisk: in December 2021, The Markup reported that Life360 was selling users' precise location data to data brokers, including Arity, X-Mode, Cuebiq, and SafeGraph. In January 2022 Life360 said it would wind those deals down, with one exception it kept: Allstate's Arity, one of the brokers named in the reporting. Whether that's resolved for your family is a judgment call, and it's the real question behind most of the searches that land on this page.
That's because a location-sharing app sees where your family goes every day, so the specific question matters: does it sell your data, can it be hacked, does it count as spyware, and what do you use instead if the history is a dealbreaker. Each is answered below, sourced rather than assumed.
Does Life360 sell your data?
Yes, historically. The Markup's December 2021 investigation found Life360 selling precise location data on tens of millions of users to roughly a dozen data brokers, who resold it downstream to buyers with no relationship to the families being tracked. Life360 announced in January 2022 that it would phase out those deals, but with carve-outs worth knowing: it kept selling to Allstate's Arity, one of the brokers named in the reporting, and continued supplying Placer.ai with aggregated rather than precise data. It has not published an independent audit confirming every data relationship today, so the honest answer is: the practice changed after it got caught, and current policy is the company's word to verify yourself.
If you're asking about right now, Life360's current privacy policy states it does not sell precise location data. It still shares some data with advertising and analytics partners, which is common for a free, ad-supported app. Read the policy before you decide the concern is resolved for you.
Can Life360 be hacked?
There's no public record of a large-scale breach of Life360's servers, but 'hacked' usually means one of two things: an attacker breaching the company's systems, or an attacker taking over your account through a weak or reused password. The second is the realistic risk. Anyone who gets your email and password, or physical access to your unlocked phone, can see your location and your group's location. That's true of every account-based location app, not a Life360-specific flaw.
Use a unique password for your Life360 account and turn on two-factor authentication if it's offered, the same baseline you'd use for any app that holds your location.
Is Life360 spyware?
No, not in the technical sense. Spyware runs covertly, without the tracked person's knowledge or consent. Life360 requires every member to install the app, sign in, and accept a group invite before their location is visible, and members can see who's in their group and leave at any time.
What gets it called spyware anyway is the data-selling history above, plus how some households use it: a parent or partner tracking someone who never agreed to it is a consent problem, and it would look the same on any tracking app, not just this one.
Why do people say Life360 is bad?
Three complaints come up most: the 2021 data-selling history, a free tier that pushes hard toward paid membership tiers to unlock features like crash detection and driving reports, and battery drain from constant background location updates. None of those make the app broken. The live map, circles, and place alerts work as advertised for most families. The complaints are about trust and cost, not reliability.
What to check before you trust any location app
The Life360 question is really a question about every location app: where does my data go, and who profits from it. Before you put your family on any app, the same short checklist applies.
The location-app privacy checklist
- Does the company sell or share location data with advertisers or data brokers?
- Who can see your location: only your group, or the company too?
- Is the core safety feature free, or behind a subscription that pushes upsells?
- Can you leave a group or stop sharing at any time, on your terms?
- Is the privacy policy written to inform you, or to cover the company?
What are the alternatives?
If the data history is a dealbreaker, you have options. Apple's Find My and the location sharing built into your messaging app cover the basics for free, though they tend to fall short on a one-tap SOS and on mixed groups with both iOS and Android users. For a closer look at one of those, see BuddySOS vs Find My Friends.
BuddySOS is built around the privacy question directly. Your location is shared only with the people in your private group, never sold to advertisers or brokers, and the app keeps no location history at all. The server holds only each member's latest position while they are sharing and clears it when sharing stops, so there is no trail to leak, sell, or hand over later. That's a verifiable difference from Life360, not a marketing line. The core safety features, live map and one-tap SOS with SMS escalation to your emergency contacts, are free on every tier. Full breakdown: BuddySOS vs Life360.
Life360 vs BuddySOS, side by side
- Data-selling history: Life360 sold precise location to brokers until 2022 and still supplies Allstate's Arity. BuddySOS has never sold location data.
- Location history: Life360 keeps a timeline of past locations. BuddySOS keeps none, only each member's current position while sharing is on.
- Core safety features: Life360 gates crash detection and driving reports behind paid membership tiers. BuddySOS keeps SOS, SMS escalation, live location, and safe-zone alerts free at every tier.
- Free plan: Life360's free Circle covers basic location sharing with ads. BuddySOS's free tier covers 1 group and 1 safe zone, also with ads, with the safety features above included.
What this looks like for a family
For everyday family safety, the goal is the same as Life360 promises: know your people are okay without a running feed of their location sold off in the background. You see when someone arrives, where they are when it matters, and you get an SOS if something goes wrong.
That's the everyday family and friends use case, and it extends to an older parent living independently, where a one-tap SOS that keeps broadcasting after the screen locks matters most. Same reassurance, without the data tradeoff.
Making the switch
Switching location apps is less work than it sounds, because the data was never yours to move in the first place. You start fresh.
One person creates a group, names it after the family, and sends an invite link. Setup runs about ninety seconds per person. See how it works or download BuddySOS, free on iOS and Android, and your family is on a shared map with your location staying private.
