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Apple and Google Introduce Alerts for Unwanted Bluetooth Tracking 39

Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple's AirTags being used for malicious purposes.

Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.
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Apple and Google Introduce Alerts for Unwanted Bluetooth Tracking

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  • by davecotter ( 1297617 ) <me@daveco t t e r . c om> on Monday May 13, 2024 @05:09PM (#64469787)

    the one legit use case i can think of: i got one in my wallet.
    someone steals it, i don't want it making noises or notifying them that i'm now tracking them (via my wallet) cuz i want it back!
    also, my luggage, my car, other things that COULD GET STOLEN. i don't want THOSE items to notify.

    but i guess you can't have it both ways, at least i can't think of a way that maintains the non-stalking mandate

    • You make a good point here. There must be some kind of happy medium between what you propose and the authors of the original article.
    • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday May 13, 2024 @05:48PM (#64469865)

      Perhaps a system that brings law enforcement into the loop could accomplish this.

      1) Your item gets stolen
      2) You assign/transfer tracking for that particular tag over to the police - meaning you no longer have access until / unless it's recovered
      3) Before stalking protections kick in, Apple's/Google's systems check the identity of the "stalking" tag against a database listing all tags assigned to police monitoring - and only warn if the tag is not in that database

      I realize this does not cover a "policeman as bad actor" scenario, but that sort of individual already has many other tools at his disposal to track/stalk a person.

      • a system that brings law enforcement into the loop

        The bluetooth tags were not marketed as Theft Recovery. Maybe Google/Apple consider it risky for their image to get involved with the police, or they just don't want to implement the human interactions to run a theft safety company taht is a very different business than their core.

      • One little problem with that plan.

        The thiefs know the air tags are in there, and generally speaking, check for, and dispose of the air tag, right away, ideally, before they steal the tool, car, bag, that has an air tag in it...

        No lie

        Putting an air tag in your car is useless, the car keys will find it and throw it away in short order.

        • by mysidia ( 191772 )

          The thiefs know the air tags are in there, and generally speaking, check for, and dispose

          The point is they DONT always know a tag is there. It's kind of a mis-feature to add extra bells to warn people about an air tag which is meant to help locate lost property -- lost property whether misplaced or stolen. There are other ways people concerned about being stalked can use to identify any trackers or rogue devices, Which are not necessarily bluetooth-based.

          As recent as last month:

          Apr 22, 2024

          • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            The point is they DONT always know a tag is there. It's kind of a mis-feature to add extra bells to warn people about an air tag which is meant to help locate lost property -- lost property whether misplaced or stolen. There are other ways people concerned about being stalked can use to identify any trackers or rogue devices, Which are not necessarily bluetooth-based.

            Except there are far more people who will misuse them for stalking people than using them as a way to reclaim stolen property.

            And human lives

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Apple has a lot to answer for here, by not creating any proper protections against stalking before releasing AirTags. If they had, people wouldn't be demanding undetectable tracker tags now.

              They also set the price point which other manufacturers have copied. I'm still waiting for some to appear on AliExpress at 1/10th the price.

            • And human lives are generally worth more as well - stalking can end in death of a person. A stolen item is generally... loss of money.

              In addition, finding your stolen property can also lead to the death of a person. Either because the thief is willing to shoot you instead of giving up your wallet with $50, or because the theft victim is willing to shoot someone to recover a wallet with $50. Or both are armed and some innocent bystanders suffer.

      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        Perhaps a system that brings law enforcement into the loop could accomplish this.

        You DONT want that. Law enforcement treats it as a low priority thing when people report things stolen.

        Many of the Stolen property that was recovered with trackers was recovered through Self-Help. If they had to rely on law enforcement, Then the stolen item would never be recovered despite having trackers on it.

      • What about if you're black? Do you really want to get involved with police?
      • by stikves ( 127823 )

        You assume police will actually do something.

        My friend had his car broken into (yes his fault for parking in California), laptop, money, and passports stolen. Used apple's tracking to a home, and took police there.

        Police was helpful in knocking the door, but ... that was it. They refused to take any more action when the occupants refused to open the door. And no, they will not help get a warranty for a measly several thousands dollars worth of stolen property.

        So, forget about actually having your wallet ret

    • by subreality ( 157447 ) on Monday May 13, 2024 @07:04PM (#64469999)

      I like the way Tile handles this. By default trackers are in "lost keys" mode. If you want the stealth "anti-theft" mode, you need to verify your ID periodically.

      Abuse is still possible, but I think it's a good balance.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It takes several hours for it to decide that a tracker is stalking you. Could be interesting on long haul flights, but for theft you have some hours before it notifies the thief.

      What are the chances of getting your wallet back after a few hours? The thief will take the cash and maybe the cards, and then discard it. You will probably just find an empty wallet in a bin somewhere. Luggage is more useful because it gets lost, but the tracker warning isn't an issue for that. Cars probably won't trigger it as the

    • the one legit use case i can think of: i got one in my wallet.

      Well, it is a problem. Between your phone and the tag, they can communicate, analyse the situation to some degree, and decide that you are being tracked and need a warning. That can happen because a stalker put the tag into your coat pocket, or because you are a thief and put my wallet including a tag into your coat pocket. If you come up with a way how the phone and the tag could distinguish the situations, great. Otherwise someone needs to make a decision, whether preventing stalking is more important, or

    • Currently Google assumes any Apple airtag following you is "unwanted/unknown". It's all pretty stupidly designed.

  • It's not Bluetooth that is tracking them, it's Apple's and Google's massive spying networks that are doing it.
    • Yeah, people gloss over this aspect when they say that Apple was just entering an existing market segment. They really weren't. No one else could make trackers as concealable as this.
  • I've been getting these notifications for a while. We've put Air Tags in a few things, and I'll get notifications on my Android phone if I travel with them. I wish I had a good way to tell my phone that, yes, I know this particular Air Tag, and I don't need to be notified. But since it's an Apple Air Tag, and I have an Android phone, there's nothing I can do to turn off notifications for specific tags. I would also like to be able to rename "unknown tags" to something meaningful.

    • by batkiwi ( 137781 )

      Android has had it for ages.

      What's really "funny" is google agreed not to release their own "air tag" type network for android until after apple implemented this tracking notification.

      Apple was actually blocking the release of google trackers.

  • Someone always brings up that one person they know that avoided injury because they weren't wearing a seatbelt. Sure you have your wallet use case, but what's happened here is humanity ruined it for you. The malicious uses of airtags outweighs the innocuous use you propose. So we need this type of safeguard. I think it's ludicrous that I would have to got to great lengths to protect myself, as the default starting position.
    • by unrtst ( 777550 )

      The malicious uses of airtags outweighs the innocuous use you propose.

      That's one opinion, but I don't buy it.

      Airtags, as well as similar tracking tags, broadcast regularly. They already give away their existence and location. Using one to track someone, though feasible and readily available, isn't really all that stealthy, and the tag has to be associated to an account for a stalker to get any value out of it.

      Meanwhile, one can get a very cheap and tiny cellular + GPS device off aliexpress, register a burner sim (not traceable back to the stalker), use it instead of an airtag

  • I thought this was already a thing. Wasn't the system meant to let you know in a semi-cryptic way? Something like "your friend might have accidentally left their keys in your car".

  • by pitch2cv ( 1473939 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @05:46AM (#64470725)

    Funny isn't it, this anti-tracking feature, when Apple iBeacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and Google's Eddystone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org] were passively tracking your BT devices wherever they can.

    In stores, for example, your most accurate location and alley strolling data then sold for marketing purposes, often totally opaque to the tracked BT device owner.

    So, the two largest tracking corporations are now telling us about their anti-tracking feature. Get real already.

    Here's what: turn of BT, WiFi whenever you're not actively using it and don't want to be used.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The beacons you mention were not capable of tracking anything. All they did was broadcast an occasional Bluetooth packet, which you phone could optionally use to trigger some event, typically via an app. Without a suitable app set up to handle the particular beacon, at most they would provide an extra data point for your device to determine approximate location, which it does using things like WiFi SSIDs and cell tower IDs as well.

      AirTags and these new Google compatible devices use a standard protocol that

  • Worthless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Tuesday May 14, 2024 @06:21AM (#64470765) Journal

    I've commented about this before, previously in response to Apple essentially making AirTags worthless for tracking stolen items because of their concern for privacy or misuse. I have the exact same comment in regards to this new nonsense of the Bluetooth warnings they're talking about now.

    You can buy totally stand-alone GPS cellular based trackers for under $20 (they require a small monthly fee since they have their own dedicated LTE data connectivity). These devices do not rely on nearby host devices to relay their positions - they do it directly and have their own SIM. Since they are standalone they can cache their tracking data, and send it in bursts. IE they could transmit once every 15 minutes, or once a day, or whatever they are configured to do (including real-time of course). Thus they don't even produce a regular RF signature to try and sniff them out.

    This other crap is just Apple (and now Android) trying to feel good about themselves that their hardware isn't abused in some way. Which, as I already said, basically defangs the devices for one of their primary use cases, which is to track items that have been stolen. I have 8 airtags on our bikes, eBikes, generator, motorcycle, and other items that are higher-risk for being stolen, but now they're nearly useless as the criminals will conveniently be notified that an AirTag is traveling with them as they are stealing my stuff.

    It is not financially viable to pay monthly for real trackers on that many objects, so AirTags would be the perfect product. However if you have some loser that is so intent on tracking some female, it's nothing for them to pay $9 a month subscription for the real stand-alone tracker they put on that persons car to track them. So they don't even need the cost-savings of an AirTag for example.

    These kinds of feel-good PR BS stunts corporations pull really gets to me.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      GPS trackers are not the same as Bluetooth trackers.

      Battery life is much worse. GPS and cellular require much more power to work than blind Bluetooth pings. No way you will get a year of battery life out of one, even a week is pushing it if you want a decent update rate. The stalker needs regular access to charge the battery.

      GPS trackers are larger and heavier than AirTags.

      Bluetooth trackers work in environments where GPS doesn't, like in a warehouse at the bottom of a pile of lost luggage, or deep inside b

      • by unrtst ( 777550 )

        GPS trackers are not the same as Bluetooth trackers.

        Battery life is much worse. ... The stalker needs regular access to charge the battery.

        If we're talking about a stalker, a few weeks seems like plenty of time between recharges.
        Meanwhile, the airtag would have alerted their phone to its presence within hours.

        Bluetooth trackers work in environments where GPS doesn't, like in a warehouse at the bottom of a pile of lost luggage, or deep inside buildings etc.

        Only if someone is around with a device that can relay the info. But yeah... different products and use cases.

        If discovered, the SIM card in a GPS tracker leads back to the bill payer. AirTags need only an anonymous Apple account.

        I feel like this part is backwards.
        The SIM card in a GPS tracker can be a burner paid for in cash.
        The airtag needs to be registered to an Apple account. How anonymous can those actually be? There's a TON of metadata/tracking assoc

        • MO, it just seems a lot more straight forward to do a burner SIM than keep an Apple account with airtags completely anonymous.

          Here's what happens: You buy an AirTag, register it to your iPhone. Then you leave the AirTag inside your camera back under a park bench. A random stranger walks past the park bench. Their iPhone detects the tag and sends a message to Apple. The message contains the location, and an ID of the tag, all encrypted. Nothing identifying the phone of the random person. Apple decrypts the message, and sends a message to your iPhone.

          It's 100% anonymous since Apple doesn't tell anyone that the message was sent. I

          • by unrtst ( 777550 )

            Yeah, that's how an airtags location makes its way to Apple's network (any iPhone user coming within proximity of an airtag that has FindMy and bluetooth enabled will sent it on anonymously to Apple).

            However, that's not the anonymous part that a stalker would need.

            The stalker would need to put an airtag of their own on or near the target. For that airtag to be useful to them, they'd need to be able to get that location info out of Apple later so they could do the stalking. That airtag would need to be regis

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          In the UK you can't get a burner data/SMS SIM very easily. Well, you can get one that receives SMS, so you can make an Apple account, but you can't send with it.

          • by unrtst ( 777550 )

            In the UK you can't get a burner data/SMS SIM very easily. Well, you can get one that receives SMS, so you can make an Apple account, but you can't send with it.

            Really? Maybe your definition of "very easily" is different than mine, or maybe within the UK things are a lot different than the rest of the EU. Seems easy to find prepaid EU sim cards with data, minutes, and text from where I sit (which, ATM, is in the US). Ex: https://www.amazon.com/PrePaid... [amazon.com]

            Here's a how to article on it: https://thesavvybackpacker.com... [thesavvybackpacker.com]

            Worse case, jump on a train through the chunnel, snag a card, then come back. Still seems easier than keeping yourself completely anonymous while track

  • Here's something interesting I found out about Apple's item tracking. I own a number of Air Tags which I mainly use on keychains and such things that my family members often misplace. The Find My app on my phone will show the location and time where an item was last seen.

    For reasons that aren't important, I happened to be carrying an Air Tag that belongs to my sister. And yes, it occasionally beeped to alert to its presence, as well as my phone displaying an alert that someone else's Air Tag was travelling

    • It makes some sense. Your own AirTags should either not move, or move with you. If it moves with you, your phone would know where you are. If a stalker tracks you, you want to know where they have seen you. And maybe where they attached the AirTag to you.
  • You must keep bluetooth on. I normally do not have it on unless I'm actively using it, so except for a very limited amount of time, this is useless.

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