Yes—a class action lawsuit filed in August 2023 claims that Tile tracker devices were deliberately used by stalkers to track victims while the company ignored abuse reports for nearly a decade. The complaint centers on Stephanie Ireland-Gordy, whose ex-partner placed a Tile Slim device in her car in October 2016 and then pinged the company’s servers 16,385 times to track her location after their breakup. When Houston police requested data to investigate the stalking, Tile refused to comply with out-of-state subpoenas, effectively obstructing law enforcement.
The lawsuit, brought by law firms WH Law and Milstein Jackson Fairchild & Wade against Tile, Life360 Inc. (Tile’s parent company), and Amazon, alleges that the platform was aware from launch that its product could be weaponized for stalking—and chose profit over safety by waiting nine years before introducing any anti-stalking safeguards. Understanding this case matters because tracking devices are proliferating in consumer products, and the legal precedents set here will determine whether manufacturers can be held accountable when their platforms are weaponized against vulnerable people.
Table of Contents
- How Did a Tile Tracker Become a Stalking Tool?
- Why Did Tile Wait Nine Years to Add Safety Features?
- Did Tile Ignore Abuse Reports?
- How Did Tile Market Trackers to Stalkers?
- What Happened When the Case Reached Federal Court?
- How Common Is Tracker-Enabled Stalking in America?
- What Does This Case Mean for Tracker Manufacturers Going Forward?
How Did a Tile Tracker Become a Stalking Tool?
The Ireland-Gordy case illustrates the anatomy of tracker-enabled stalking. In October 2016, Stephanie Ireland-Gordy’s ex-partner hid a Tile Slim tracking device inside her car without her knowledge. Over the subsequent weeks and months, the stalker repeatedly accessed the Tile app to “ping” the device, forcing it to emit a sound so he could pinpoint her real-time location. Between October 2016 and early 2017, he performed this tracking operation 16,385 times. This wasn’t careless misuse of a product—it was systematic surveillance.
The Tile app was designed with a feature that allowed users to locate their devices remotely, a feature the stalker weaponized against Stephanie. When Houston police became aware of the stalking and issued a subpoena to Tile requesting the stalker’s access logs and Stephanie’s location history, the company refused. Tile claimed it could not comply with out-of-state subpoenas, effectively blocking law enforcement from obtaining evidence in an active stalking case. This obstruction is central to the lawsuit’s claims: not only did Tile’s product enable the abuse, but the company actively prevented investigators from building a criminal case against the perpetrator. The case highlights a critical gap in how tracker manufacturers treat law enforcement requests and user safety—one that would take years to even begin to address.
Why Did Tile Wait Nine Years to Add Safety Features?
Tile was founded in 2013 and launched its tracker product around 2013-2014, yet the company did not introduce any anti-stalking safety measures until 2022. That’s a nine-year window during which the platform was known to enable stalking, during which reported abuse cases accumulated, and during which the company took no meaningful action. The lawsuit alleges that Tile was aware of stalking misuse “from the moment of the product’s release”—meaning the company knew about this danger from day one and still chose to prioritize product growth over user safety. When Tile finally introduced its “Scan and Secure” safety feature in 2022, it was positioned as a way to detect Tiles hidden in someone’s belongings.
However, even this minimal safeguard came with a critical loophole: the anti-theft policy that governed the feature allowed users to disable the security function. In practice, this meant a stalker could turn off the detection alert, rendering the safety feature ineffective. Rather than locking stalkers out of the app or enforcing mandatory abuse reporting, Tile added a feature that users themselves could circumvent. The message this sends to potential abusers is clear: use Tile’s product as you wish, and if a user feels unsafe, they can disable the warning anyway.
Did Tile Ignore Abuse Reports?
The lawsuit’s title directly answers this: yes. Tile received abuse reports from users who experienced or suspected stalking, and the company’s response was inadequate. Court filings allege that the platform ignored these complaints rather than escalating them to law enforcement, suspending accounts, or taking other protective measures. For a company in the business of location tracking, a stalking report should trigger immediate investigation—freezing the stalker’s account, preserving location data for law enforcement, and contacting the victim.
Instead, the lawsuit claims Tile’s standard response was inaction. This negligence is compounded by Life360’s alleged obstruction of law enforcement itself. The amended complaint includes statements from prosecutors and police officers describing cooperation failures—cases where Life360 refused to provide data, blocked investigations, or delayed responses to subpoenas. When a user reports being stalked, and law enforcement requests access to logs that could identify the stalker and prove the abuse, the company’s refusal becomes not just a customer service failure but an obstruction of justice. The complaint suggests this was systemic, not isolated to Ireland-Gordy’s case.
How Did Tile Market Trackers to Stalkers?
The lawsuit alleges that Tile’s own marketing created an audience for tracking abuse. The complaint claims the company marketed trackers “on pornographic websites” where users in the comments explicitly discussed using devices to stalk women. Rather than pull advertisements from these platforms, Tile left them running. The company was alleged to have marketed trackers as a tool for “tracking people, particularly women,” and the complaint describes this as both explicit and implicit messaging—the product’s functionality was the message.
This is a critical distinction: Tile did not accidentally develop a stalking tool. The lawsuit asserts that the company deliberately positioned tracking devices as a way to follow people, then distributed ads targeting spaces where potential abusers congregated. It’s the difference between a knife manufacturer and a company that advertises knives to people publicly planning to stab someone—in the latter case, there’s clear knowledge of intended misuse. The complaint argues Tile operated in that latter category, which raises the legal question of whether the company had a duty to prevent foreseeable abuse.
What Happened When the Case Reached Federal Court?
The class action faced significant setbacks in 2025 and 2026. In August 2025, a federal judge dismissed claims against the Ireland-Gordy themselves, ruling that the seven-year gap between when Stephanie discovered the tracker and when the lawsuit was filed exceeded the statute of limitations. This ruling narrowed the case significantly—even though Tile’s nine-year delay in addressing stalking was not in dispute, the court decided that Stephanie’s delay in suing was fatal. The ruling highlighted a perverse incentive: stalking victims have a limited window to file suit after discovering abuse, but the trauma and logistics of escaping a stalking situation often delay legal action beyond what courts consider reasonable. By January 2026, the battle had shifted to arbitration.
Tile argued that users’ continued use of the app after Tile updated its terms of service constituted consent to mandatory arbitration—meaning claims would be resolved in private proceedings rather than federal court. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Tile, holding that even if users never affirmatively agreed to the new arbitration terms, simply continuing to use the app counted as acceptance. This is a significant advantage for Tile because arbitration is typically faster, cheaper, more secretive, and more favorable to corporations than litigation. Victims have urged the appeals court to keep claims in federal court, but as of early 2026, the trend is toward private arbitration—which means any settlement or judgment in this case may never become public record.
How Common Is Tracker-Enabled Stalking in America?
The Ireland-Gordy case is not an outlier—it’s part of a documented epidemic. According to reported statistics, approximately 13.5 million people are stalking victims annually in the United States. Nearly 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men experience stalking in their lifetime. More directly relevant to tracker devices: nearly 1 in 10 Americans report having a GPS device or smart tag hacked or tracked without their permission. As consumer tracking devices proliferate—Apple AirTags, Samsung SmartTags, Amazon Tiles, and dozens of others—law enforcement agencies report increasing cases of stalking involving these trackers.
The stalking epidemic is not hypothetical; it’s widespread, and tracking devices have become standardized tools for perpetrators. The pandemic accelerated awareness of tracker-based stalking as domestic violence advocates documented cases of abusers placing AirTags in cars, children’s clothing, and belongings to track intimate partners and family members. What was once a niche concern—that trackers could be misused—became obviously foreseeable. By 2022, when Tile finally added safety features, the company could not claim ignorance about the problem. The 16,385 pings Ireland-Gordy’s stalker sent to track her location were part of a national pattern that Tile and other manufacturers could easily have anticipated and prevented.
What Does This Case Mean for Tracker Manufacturers Going Forward?
The Tile lawsuit sets a potential precedent for holding manufacturers accountable when their products enable abuse. If the case survives arbitration and reaches a jury verdict in favor of the victims, it could establish that tracker companies have a legal duty to implement anti-stalking safeguards from launch, not years later as an afterthought. Manufacturers would face pressure to build features like mandatory abuse reporting, law enforcement cooperation requirements, and detection alerts that cannot be disabled. The alternative—the path Tile took—would become legally risky.
However, the push toward arbitration in 2026 suggests that outcome is uncertain. Private arbitration typically produces confidential settlements that do not create public legal precedent, which means even if Tile pays millions to settle, future manufacturers may not face the same liability. The Ireland-Gordy case could either become a watershed moment for consumer product safety in the tracking industry, or it could quietly settle in private arbitration and change nothing. The outcome depends on whether victims’ attorneys can keep claims in federal court and whether juries hold corporations accountable for foreseeable abuse.
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