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Comment by crhulls | Hacker News Reader

We get I think something on the order of 10,000 customer service tickets a week, and we regularly get subpoenas. We've heard almost every story you can think of. Although we are getting inquiries with this recent press, in terms of actual reports of stalking via our devices it is essentially zero.

AirTags has a much broader network than us as of now. Part of why we bought Tile is because we can expand their network. We aren't as big as Apple but we have about 10% of devices so it will get us way up the S curve.

So I could see it becoming more of an issue, which is why I'm looking for ideas. One thought would be to rate limit updates - at some frequency you get 90% of the benefit for lost items (since they don't move unless it was lost on say a train) but it dramatically hampers more nefarious use cases. That is just one thought. Or perhaps requiring ID verification and registering each device to a real human.

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What do you mean by "actual stalking report"?

ID verification is the way to go IMO. So much stalking isn't like in movies, it's just seemingly normal people seeing how far they can push things and get away with it. And potentially some way to get people to register what it's being used for, as well as a way to register it missing. That would be very useful in a stalking case to cross-reference with how a the alledged stalker claims the tracker ended up in someone's bag/car/etc and could potentially be the break through that gets the conviction

I mean that we do know what it is like when users are stalked with our product - we've heard all sorts of crazy stories over the years about our app being used for stalking - it sucks when we hear it and we help with law enforcement. This just hasn't been a thing for Tile (yet anyway - probably due to the much less dense network).

I think we will end up with ID verification - I bet Apple could do that too. Then you'd be risking a felony if you use the product illegally.

> in terms of actual reports of stalking via our devices it is essentially zero

I'm confused, now you're admitting that stalking is an active part of the product and this has gone on for years.

We learned early on that people would very very occasionally use our APP for stalking .000001% of the time. That was easy to fix - we send regular push notifications, we let you know when someone is added to your group, we participate in subpoena's from law enforcement etc. We have had over 100 million downloads so we have heard it all, it is just the law of large numbers.

I'm talking about Tile devices - that is where we've yet to see anything concrete, and as mentioned we don't yet have a network that rivals AirTags. But we want to get ahead of it.

How are you arriving at the .000001% statistic? What is your methodology here?

ID verification will help rule out a lot of casual stalkers but it won't help with the slightly more experienced ones who know how difficult it is to prosecute. "Oh they must have stolen the tracker to frame me!" "I accidentally dropped it in their bag" and similar WILL be a case's undoing in court. If you make people register what the tag is for as part of the verification process, actually have a human check the answer on the other end when they submit their answer that it's specific enough, and periodically make them re-verify this (eg every time they cange the battery, have a pop up "are you still using the tag for xxxxx") means only the most meticulous planner can use it to stalk. At which point the tracker is realistically no more of a vector than the victim's laptop.

You can't convince the police or a judge that you dropped the tag in someone's car if you're supposed to be using it on your cat's collar for example.

Surely then a stalker just needs to be bright enough to make up a story like "I put it into my bag or wallet when I go out, and since I only have one tracker I often move it between them depending on if I have much cash." rather than "I got it for my cat"? That story took under a minute to come up with, I imagine there are even smoother ones a stalker could think of with 20mins effort.

Or at the expense of making it a little bigger, superglue something like a usb stick and you've always got an excuse to have it in your pocket until you "lose" it. Hell, isn't not wanting to lose a coat that you claim to often leave places a good enough reason to have one in your pocket?

I think your best bet is to fund a study group to do an independent public report on the risks around these products and recommendations for mitigating them. Put domestic abuse survivors, parents, infosec people, lawyers, etc on there. Stakeholders and people good at reasoning about risk. You might not like all of the conclusions but to the extent you adopt them it will give you the most credit for having done the right things.

Thanks for the response. Thinking this through a bit more from a use case perspective:

1. If I was stalked by someone using your product, would I contact your customer support?

2. If I was doing the stalking, would I contact your customer support?

Pretty sure the answer would be no in both cases. In 1), I wouldn't necessarily even know it is your product. In 2), what am I going to say to customer support? "I'm trying to stalk my husband and your product isn't working well."?

Subpoenas might reveal a percentage of stalking activities, but if the OPs post is true, then I don't even think police would be involved here.

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