I would definitely like an app that will keep me apprised of any Bluetooth devices that follow me. The Apple app for android doesn’t do that. It is manual scan only. But I also think this is the exact kind of basic but desirable app to be wary of in the Google play store because many such apps are likely to be malware.
4 Likes
The fact that this device can so easily be used for such nefarious purposes makes me think they should all be recalled and deactivated.
No one’s life is worth this “convenience”.
2 Likes
The thing is, this wouldn’t even be so hard to write. I’ve been doing some hobby work with BLE and I’m continually surprised how easy it is to basically sniff and in many cases interact with any several dozen BLE devices around me in my condo building. Things like smart TVs, headphones, and any other number of random peripherals.
All these tracker thingies use BLE and will broadcast out frequently so they can be discovered. Basically you’d need some code to use the GPS to track your location and alert you when an unexpected BLE thingy is traveling with you. I’m guessing this is basically how the AirTag alert works here - they just filter it to their own devices.
6 Likes
While I’m willing to give them credit for shipping an Android version of the app, it has only just recently (like a month?) shipped while AirTags have been on the market for quite some time (like a year?). That is a pretty fair gap when nothing was available if you didn’t have some manner of Apple product.
I’m also mostly willing to chalk it up to incompetence at writing Android apps as opposed to any sort of malice, they did talk about having an Android app “coming soon” when they did the Air Tags product launch.
(note: all dates may be off by up to six years: this is the 2020s and my time sense has been badly hosed over by COVID-era isolation)
Ah, my mistake – I guess the first price I saw for the Tile a few years back lodged itself in my head. Of corse the price has come down over the last 5+ years because they aren’t Apple so price cuts are a feature of newer products!
I remember that…I actually did work for Apple at the time, and stories internally were SJ had met with Greenpeace and decided to “clean up shop”. GP heard nothing back, saw no announcements, and assumed no announcement from Apple was the same thing as no action (which to be fair most companies love to make press releases about what they are going to do, Apple is a rarity on doing it and then crowing about it after). Which is why a lot of the changes Apple made “after” all of GP’s noise were only a few months as opposed to a year+ that it normally takes to redesign substantial parts of products or at least manufacturing processes.
I don’t know if it was really true or not as I was not doing hardware design, or eating lunch with SJ (we did frequently stand “in line” at the same Sushi counter…and for some reason his lunch always came out first, no matter how long I had already been waiting). Given the timeframes though I think it is believable.
3 Likes
Wait, is that Steve Jobs back when he would just get a new car every few months for the loophole of not needing a license plate?
I’m sort of disappointed he’s not around anymore now that that loophole has been closed, and he’d have to drive around with an unsightly temporary paper license plate with a random, unique alphanumeric number.
1 Like
I don’t use iOS not does anyone in my immediate circle so these tags seem like a liability if it works only by default for iOS users. I know that I would never have a reason to download the app normally
1 Like
Indeed, there are quite a lot of “bluetooth finder” or “bluetooth scanner” apps on the iOS app store. They’re mostly advertised as helping you find your missing earbuds. Some will show a history of bluetooth contacts. They just need to start keeping track of bluetooth devices that are persistently around you but not paired to any of your devices and put up an alert about those. A lot of those would be innocuous, of course (my wife’s earbuds, etc), but you could add those to an “ignore” list.
4 Likes
Because blogs and journalists consistently ignore that other products are as effective stalking devices.
1 Like
As others have noted, the ubiquity of Apple products makes these an increased level of threat. They are much smaller with longer life than a GPS tracker with cellular data upload and work anywhere in the world that there are iPhone users. Well, possibly not in China or Russia - but the thing of it is you don’t need to have a cellular data plan in the regions it’s used in.
One could sew one of these into a purse strap or other places that a cellular tracker wouldn’t fit. And the ubiquity of iOS devices and the integration of AirTracker tracking into the OS means the tracking is much, much better than tile. So while these might be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the evolution is a whole new level of efficacy.
So were pulling all smartphones from the market? All pet trackers?
Smaller, yes. At least for the same price. “Last longer“ – depends. Telekom’s pet tracker with real time cellular GPS weights 33 g and has a battery life of 5 days. That’s more than enough to doxx someone even by mail or hiding it in their back pack.
1 Like
Air tags weigh 11 grams have a 1 year battery life. I’d say that is a rather dramatic difference in capability. There is no “depends” about it.
1 Like
On one hand, Apple has some anti tracking measures, on the other hand, they have a wider set of detectors (iPhones) available. Not sure which I like less.
1 Like
AirTags are on the market for eights months, the Android app was announced seven months ago and released a week ago.
Perhaps you’re thinking of Samsung? They released their smarttags eleven months ago, announced a checking feature (pull) in their smart things app which only works on galaxy a day before apple announced AirTags. At that time the self-revealing feature of AirTags had been known, though.
Just checked april 20th comments I read in tech forums where people lauded Samsung efforts and got told that apple would have this in start, so Samsung was reactive, not proactive.
A car won’t care. And five days are more than enough to find out someone’s place of residence. Sure, the AirTag will work a year, but it won’t accumulate data and report it later. Nor will people likely be unaware of it for much longer, since it will beep after after a while.
There are scenarios where this doesn’t apply, of course, but the main damage as in exposing the place of living will probably happen within 24, if not 12 hours, after being attacked.
For domestic abusers, it’s different. Those were easiest scenario where one would circumvent the self-revealing feature due to the victim returning home and the AirTag getting marked as “ok, that’s okay”, so it wouldn’t reveal itself. But Apple addressed this by shortening the time to report. Also, I can’t say that I have tested this extensively, but I never get good intel on our car’s location when my wife arrived at her place of work. My working hypothesis is that iOS devices that travel with a suspect AirTag (which ours is, to my wife’s iPad) won’t update their position.
Anyway, a domestic abuser usually has access to their victims tech and can already install all kinds of surveillance apps.
I wonder if there is a term for this? I mean, there’s physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse … smart abuse? Surveillance abuse?
1 Like
You betcha!
This would require the cooperation of the operating system or kill the battery real fast.
Adding to this: My wife left our car at the fringe of a near-urban shopping area. Sure, not the boondocks and it’s Christmas shopping season, but I checked and I basically got and update of its position about every 8 minutes or so over the course of the morning.
2 Likes
With a literal reading of the term “continuous”, sure. But if we are talking about continuous periodic checks that a properly made app allowed you to select in preferences, such as couple of times an hour, then no.
