Find My Tracking In iOS 14 Will Locate Third-Party Devices (engadget.com) 20
Apple's Find My tracking feature in iOS 14 will allow users to find third-party devices. Engadget reports: A draft specification for hardware makers is available now, although you'll clearly have to wait until both the general release of iOS 14 and finished implementations for those gadgets. A completed spec should be available by the end of 2020. This could be a boon for many hardware manufacturers, not to mention anyone who has a habit of leaving devices behind. However, it could be particularly useful for item trackers that, until now, have had to rely on third-party apps with limited iOS integration.
This being apple I wonder how usable it will be (Score:2)
Most apple programs are quite restrictive at least at start. If we take homekit as example, the original version required very close integration and expensive chips to be added to the products, but later it was relaxed to get people to actually use it...
So I wonder if this will go the same trajectory as I did note the no personal use part of the thing currently.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this is because it's far easier to be restrictive at first, then loosen the restrictions, than to be loose and tighten them. The App Store is a
Working link to the spec? (Score:2)
I tried to look at the spec but you need to log in to a developer account. Anyone got a viewable copy?
Re: Working link to the spec? (Score:2)
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Thanks. Having a skim it looks like it's basically decent, except for a few potential issues.
- The data goes to Apple, not ideal because it probably means you need an Apple account to locate your stuff.
- The crypto is sound in principal but in practice generating the random IDs will probably be done very very badly on many devices, enabling tracking.
- It seems vulnerable to flooding with bogus data.
- Law enforcement is going to want access to the data and the servers will be attacked, which given Apple's tr
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Law enforcement is going to want access to the data and the servers will be attacked, which given Apple's track record on security is worrying
Could you go into some detail here? What exactly is worrying you? I assume that _all_ the items that I might be tracking would be supposed to be with me, or at my home, my workplace, or maybe my holiday home, so police would be able to find them if they find me.
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The way this works is that devices being tracked act as Bluetooth Low Energy beacons so that other people's nearby iPhones can detect them. A pseudo-random identifier to sent to the iPhone and then back to Apple. When you lose a device it uses the device's serial number to calculate all the IDs it will have used and see if any of them have been seen.
That way devices without their own cellular modem or wifi can be located.
So the risk is that if someone can get into the Apple database, or if someone can get i
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So the risk is that if someone can get into the Apple database, or if someone can get into your Apple account they can also see your location data, current and potentially historical
Obviously they can't see _my_ location data because that isn't being reported. If they can get into my Apple account, that's game over for all my data, so that's not of any interest. Can they get into Apple's servers? Well, Apple wouldn't know which devices are mine. And it should be obvious that Apple removes all but the last location information, since after a location change the old location is of no value to the purpose of this feature.
And then consider that Apple has people who thought about all thi
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"Obviously they can't see _my_ location data because that isn't being reported."
The locations of items you may carry on you are, even if your phone is off, when you pass by other iDevice users.
Good, where's the remote for my TV? (Score:2)
Find My ID Badge? (Score:4, Interesting)
As they have NFC chips in the phones for Apple Pay, I'd love to see them be able to tell me when I'm near things with passive NFC chips, even if it's something where I have to 'register' it first.
So then, when I can't find my ID badge in the morning, I can just walk around my house and have my phone tell me when I'm close, rather than the walk of shame and going into the security office for a one-day badge.
I admit, it's possible that the HSPD12 badges operate at a frequency that the Apple Pay chips don't operate at, but I'm guessing that there's a relatively small range of frequencies used by various contactless cards / keyfobs / etc.
Re:Find My ID Badge? (Score:4, Insightful)
NFC range is by design under 20cm without specialized hardware. Your phone physically cannot do what you are asking.
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20cm is still better than what I'm dealing with now. I'd love to be able to shove my phone into my hamper and wiggle it around a bit to see if it beeped, so I knew if had to start pulling everything out and going through the pockets.
Or wave it over piles of paperwork on my desk that I might've buried it under.
Or wave it along the couch, before I pull out all of the cushions to see if it's ended up with the loose change.
So yeah, I could work with 20cm range. Even 10cm is still useful still useful vs. the a
Welcome to the party, Apple! (Score:2)
Android has had integration with Tile and other tracking fobs for several years. About time Apple considered it.
Next, consider integrating it to the point that Android does, where you can just ask "Hey Google, where are my car keys?"
Understanding what “Find My“ is about (Score:2)
Understanding what “Find My“ (I hate this name) is about would have taken more effort than writing your pointless posting. Explaining it to you would be pointless, tough, because you are not interested. What a waste.
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Use your cell phone camera to take pictures under your couch, so you know if you need to actually get your face down there to extract whatever's under there.
(I'd credit whoever it was that showed me the trick, but I can't remember. I suspect it was my former co-worker Amy, who would use a camera to get the serial numbers off of servers so she didn't have to contort into strange positions when we had a tiny server room)
Find our.... (Score:2)
"Find our kid's knock-off Airpods" feature would be great !