Tile’s new ‘Lost and Found’ QR labels track your lost items without battery or privacy concerns

Tile has made it easy to find lost items for years with its tracker tags, but the company is now revealing a new option. Tile’s “Lost and Found” labels use a simple QR code to help you track a lost item, and it requires no batteries and limits worries over privacy.

“Lost and Found” labels are essentially just little stickers that you can add to anything and have a small QR code on the sticker. The unique code can be scanned and includes your contact details to help you recover your lost gear. There’s also a personalized message on that page which is powered by the Tile app.

Obviously, this is a low-tech solution that’s roughly equivalent to just writing your phone number on whatever you’re trying to recover. Essentially, the perk here is that you can change details after adding the sticker, say if you move, change your phone number, or just need to include a specific message.

While it is dead simple, there are some advantages to using this over a high-tech solution.

For one, these stickers will never need a battery. You’ll never be required to change the battery or replace the tracker if the nonreplaceable battery dies, as is the case with some of Tile’s smaller trackers.

The other advantage here is privacy. While you are putting your contact details just a scan away, these QR code stickers won’t trace your location. Apple’s AirTags have brought up a conversation about the privacy implications of tracker devices, as some bad actors have used them for some nefarious purposes.

Tile charges just $14.99 for three sheets of these “Lost and Found” stickers, with 15 stickers in total. Obviously, these work both with Android and iOS.