Pretty cool but why does it have to be limited to AirTag or any specific devices? It would be easy to expand it to keep track of any nearby Bluetooth device and a corresponding whitelist. (Or do AirTag devices rotate Bluetooth MACs?)
Airtags are just one implementation of a Bluetooth transmitter and a long life battery but anyone could probably build a similar device dedicated to tracking with off the shelf parts.
Airtags are the only devices (that I know of) that can leverage a worldwide network of iPhones to transmit their location rather than a power intensive LTE or GSM link. They also don't require any external antennae for location determination like those GPS trackers stalkers use.
Those features make make AirTags more practical for any use, good or bad. They do rotate Bluetooth MAC addresses so only you and Apple can follow where the tag has been, supposedly.
Furthermore, if your target has an iPhone, you can partially leverage their phone against them. Of course Apple saw this coming and added a warning. If you're on Android you'll have to rely on apps like these (or the theoretical app Apple promised at some point) to prevent AirStalking
Tile has offered a similar mechanism for years but the lack of a worldwide network of automatic data collection points makes their network a lot less useful for good or bad people.
A prominent group of Virtual YouTubers (whose talents use avatars and keep their real identities anonymous) recently needed to stop allowing fans to send gifts to talents, despite them always having been screened, because the gifts might contain AirTags that could ping the sender when they arrive ina talent’s home. It’s not that this wasn’t possible before, but it suddenly became easy for a would-be stalker to execute the attack.
A tool like this that reliably detects AirTags rather than relying on whatever heuristics Apple uses to say “an AirTag is following you” would be invaluable for people’s opsec, be they performers or journalists or anyone else desiring anonymity.
Why not just have all packages go through a central location first, like an office in the city or something, where someone can open them and pass on the gifts? This is already a thing for celebrities/people who get targeted by stalkers/attackers.
Is it possible to build a "delay fuse" with a CR1216 or CR1616, Nch FET and a 6-pin AVR all inside a CR2032? Yes, with plenty of room to spare for caps[1]
Can’t realistically inspect dozen random products from Amazon each day and never let an AirTag slip. They stream from home with an iPhone for face tracking so accuracy will be nothing short of ideal.
It irks me that the onus of not being tracked is on the "target" themselves.
Further, there's no protection if you have no smartphone but are in a dense population area surrounded by devices that are part of this surveillance network.
There is no aspect of this that is privacy friendly except for the hand waving.
There’s protection even if you’re standing there naked (except for the AirTag, of course, that has been secretly duct-taped to your buttocks): if the paired phone isn’t around, the AirTag makes noise. I can confirm this because my spouse is currently out of town, and I’ve grabbed her RV keys a couple of times to put stuff in the RV. And every time I pick the keys up, the AirTag goes off. It eventually shuts up just shy of my threshold of looking for a way to turn it off. (Or I could just make sure to grab my keys instead of hers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
What other options allow them to embed a tiny almost invisible device in a piece of clothing or a toy and learn its location from anywhere in the world?
GPS trackers are larger, require a fair amount of power (big battery), don't work well indoors, and require cellular service.
I was thinking about this - if I were a stalker, I wouldn’t bother with any physical device. I’d just add myself (or an innocuous looking account) to “share my location” on their phone.
The non-HN public would probably never notice, and it wouldn’t be too hard to get someone’s unlocked phone (especially in an abusive-relationship scenario)
In cases where you can get access to the phone, sure.
But these trackers mean that you can give a stuffed animal to your favorite streaming star at a conference (or sent one in the post to their mailbox service) and then learn where they live... and you can do so with a few minutes effort and a few dollars in cost above the toy.
If you know you're at risk you can protect your phone. I think the threat from these apple-powered trackers is much more severe, but it's true that these sorts of risks still exist without them.
Amazon Sidewalk isn't really a worldwide thing. Amazon has a localized website in only 20 countries, my guess is that in most other countries there aren't many Alexa and Ring devices.
Same difference. The majority of people reading this are regularly within a half mile of a Sidewalk device (well, the ones that work on 900MHz) and might be wary of a Tile being used to track them as well.
> Airtags are the only devices (that I know of) that can leverage a worldwide network of iPhones to transmit their location rather than a power intensive LTE or GSM link
Sure, but “of iPhones” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Worldwide network of <users of some common hardware or software> generally isn't as uncommon.
> Airtags are just one implementation of a Bluetooth transmitter and a long life battery but anyone could probably build a similar device dedicated to tracking with off the shelf parts.
There is nothing Dropbox does that can’t be done with rsync.
Private resolvable addresses are a BLE thing, but very few devices (aside from Apple products and Android phones) actually use them. It’s a shame, really, because most embedded BLE stacks support the feature.
My company is working on a platform to make BLE product development much easier than it is today, and also to improve the quality of BLE products. We plan to make privacy a standard feature.
Airtags are just one implementation of a Bluetooth transmitter and a long life battery but anyone could probably build a similar device dedicated to tracking with off the shelf parts.