Tile--Find Your Lost Stuff

My bright idea for the day:

Tile website here

Great idea and I want some!

From the Q&A:

Can other Tile App users search for my  Tiles?

No. The Tile team takes your security seriously. Only you and the Tile users you've explicitly shared your Tiles with can search for your Tiles. 

My question:  Can I de-authorize Tile sharing?  I would presume so.

Finding things outside the house requires the saturation of the detector App held by others in the Tile Universe explicitly enabled by me as "Friends" to search for my tiles.

I would suggest that it is not just my explicitly authorized number of Tile Users with Apps out there randomly moving around in their normally small patterned routine orbit of but Apps on the devices of those that move around and saturate a large local geographic orbit as part of their jobs that places them with high probability in proximity to detect Tiles associated by the system with being "lost".

Who are they?

Meter readers.  Water, gas, electric.  They are all reading "relatively near field" signals emitted by the utility meters located at every utility service point in a city.

Postal delivery workers.  UPS, Federal Express.

Street sweepers.

Garbage collectors.

Who else in addition to the above goes by virtually every house, every building, on every street in a city across the nation on a daily to weekly basis?

Any ideas? They are the one I would like explicitly "Friend" if something was "missing".

Professional drivers in general.  How quickly can the Tile App pick up the signal of a passing car?

Might these people offer to be an explicitly authorized "Friend" for a day, a week?

Give Tiles and the App at a special rate or even free to these categories, if a way could be found to target them..union membership?  Other way?  Then provide a method for them to become explicitly authorized "Friends" It would pay back immediately on the detection side quicker that just a general random distribution to those wishing to buy them based on a shot gun marketing strategy and a shotgun detection strategy once Apps are out there in relatively small numbers roaming as they will to cover geographical areas to a small degree. 

The problem is that I would know how many "Friends" I had looking out for my lost Tile.  If there was only one then I would know who detected it.  But , what the heck, that is what friends are for.

Seems to be no way to send this idea to Tile.

" Contact Us" at the web site does not work for me.

The flip side is a stationary purpose built App device at choke points where large numbers of people pass by.  Bridges, tunnels, thoroughfares.  In effect, just simply near field mini cell towers to receive and relay a signal to a cell tower , cheap, to be housed in a secure housing, solar powered, few in number and strategically placed. That however goes beyond "Friends" helping me find something.

Strategic placement and saturation?

The Cable Boxes on the street.  A "service added" by the Cable company to its communication network?  Put a device and app in every cable box that serves a neighborhood.  My neighborhood box is just a single lot away from me. 

Would the Cable Company be my "Friend" to be explicitly authorized to search for my Tile?  They tell me they are my Friend.

Find your lost stuff by "Friends" helping to find it.

Maybe my garbage collector is a BFF that I did not know I have? Hey, buddy, got an iPhone? Would you do a friendly favor for me?   A favor that is worth something to me?

Privacy issues abound here but isn't that the issue of the day?

Interesting idea.

Perhaps in the case of reported theft the Police Department might have an arrangement with civic minded volunteers of the type that read meters, collect garbage, etc. given my explicit authorization to  use an information network of "Friends" as well as employees in patrol cars. 

This won't post as an update.  Maybe I used too many of the bad keywords.  Maybe somebody does not like my idea?  "Error in posting" received 8 times so far for the additional comment I added to update the original post.  Update starting after "Interesting Idea".  Failure to update like this has never happened before.

Update failure period coincided with a page view at 9:16 by the only page viewer that stats say looks at all my posts shortly after posting.  Nobody else looks at them.  I just have a real audience of 1 and a few random searchers once in awhile.