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The quickest solution would be to stop using Android. Any cellular device will report its location to the nearest cell tower. This data is sold to private part

The quickest solution would be to stop using Android. Any cellular device will report its location to the nearest cell tower. This data is sold to private parties and available to query nominally by law enforcement only but really to any bidder willing to pay Zumigo or Microbilt a fairly reasonable fee. Further that location is in realtime and contains historical breadcrumbs. The periodic pings from your device not masking it's MAC address by attempting to query nearby wifi points, your bluetooth sending out rotating EID's are useful for in store tracking of customers but worse than running footage through collected CCTV footage. Likewise the wifi/bluetooth breadcrumbs are worse data than the LTE pings we're already getting.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
To buy my phone location data the perpetrator needs to know my phone number firsr, which can be not that easy. Ok. Another scenario. A serial rapist sees a girl he likes at the shopping mall, exiting her car. He attaches an AirTag to the car, and in a few short hours he knows where she lives. Of course, he could do it with GPS tracker, but such tracker needs to transmit data, and cellular connection is rarely anonymous, creating risks for the perpetrator. So this wonderful technology makes all sorts of stalking much more accessible.
- lgats 5y ago
  This same scenario exists with Tile Trackers.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    At least not every iPhone reports Tiles to base.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Or they could just do it the old fashioned way and just follow them in their car. Or just tape a burner android phone to the car. Or tape a GPS with cellular tracker using a burner SIM to the car. Cellular connections are more than anonymous enough in most countries, and its not like a perpetrator in you scenario is gonna be leaving the device on the car for an extend period of time. At the end of the day stalking someone who isn’t actively defending again being stalked is pretty trivial. AirTags don’t really change the status-quo that much. They’ve just shone a light on an existing issue.
lgats 5y ago
Apple devices anonymize MAC address for WiFi discovery https://support.apple.com/guide/security/wi-fi-privacy-secb9cb3140c/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/wi-fi-privacy-secb9...
- xemoka 5y ago
  And so does android apparently: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-mac-randomization https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-mac-ran...
matthewowen 5y ago
You're missing the point. When OP says "How do I protect myself against this, if I am an Android user?" it's clear that the more relevant point is meant to be "if I am not an iPhone user". He won't be participating in the network, but he's also unable to be warned of being tracked which does seem unfortunate.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, he's being warned of being tracked by the AirTag beeping when moved, and displaying information on any NFC capable device (such as most Android phones).
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    AirTags are talking regular Bluetooth 5, not some magic Apple variation of it, right? That would imply my Android phone should be able to see them. For example, I should be able to poke at them using nRF Toolbox app I have installed. (We have only so many iPhone users in Poland, and I currently live in a small town, so I can't just experimentally check it right now.) If that's true, then one should be able to write an app that scans for AirTags in the background and warns you about their presence. I'd hope someone will do this. I'd also hope this would eventually be included in the Android OS itself, perhaps as a generalized facility to detect Tile/AirTag-like devices around you. Long time ago, there were these things called "beacons", that IIRC started with Apple introducing iBeacon spec/protocol. They used BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to announce themselves. Some of those were used for the purpose of tracking your belongings[0]. I assume AirTags must be substantially different from that, because saw zero mentions of the Beacons in articles and discussions about AirTags so far. -- [0] - I even bought a bunch of these on Aliexpress to play with, but didn't want to install the vendor's sketchy app, so I ended up not using them (but I could make them beep and give me some telemetry by poking them over BLE directly). They worked off a CR2032, but there was no "tracking network" back then - you'd connect these tags to your phone, and they'd just start beeping when they disconnected from your phone. A pretty unreliable design, given BLE can be flaky when mixed with apps, battery saving modes, and thick walls in an apartment. Unfortunately, all the non-sketchy makers of BLE beacons seem to have focused entirely on the retailer market - i.e. using them to push spam to your phone as you walk through a mall. I lost all my interest in that technology then.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

To buy my phone location data the perpetrator needs to know my phone number firsr, which can be not that easy. Ok. Another scenario. A serial rapist sees a girl he likes at the shopping mall, exiting her car. He attaches an AirTag to the car, and in a few short hours he knows where she lives. Of course, he could do it with GPS tracker, but such tracker needs to transmit data, and cellular connection is rarely anonymous, creating risks for the perpetrator. So this wonderful technology makes all sorts of stalking much more accessible.

lgats 5y ago
This same scenario exists with Tile Trackers.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  At least not every iPhone reports Tiles to base.
avianlyric 5y ago
Or they could just do it the old fashioned way and just follow them in their car. Or just tape a burner android phone to the car. Or tape a GPS with cellular tracker using a burner SIM to the car. Cellular connections are more than anonymous enough in most countries, and its not like a perpetrator in you scenario is gonna be leaving the device on the car for an extend period of time. At the end of the day stalking someone who isn’t actively defending again being stalked is pretty trivial. AirTags don’t really change the status-quo that much. They’ve just shone a light on an existing issue.

lgats 5y ago

Apple devices anonymize MAC address for WiFi discovery https://support.apple.com/guide/security/wi-fi-privacy-secb9cb3140c/web https://support.apple.com/guide/security/wi-fi-privacy-secb9...

xemoka 5y ago
And so does android apparently: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-mac-randomization https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-mac-ran...

matthewowen 5y ago

You're missing the point. When OP says "How do I protect myself against this, if I am an Android user?" it's clear that the more relevant point is meant to be "if I am not an iPhone user". He won't be participating in the network, but he's also unable to be warned of being tracked which does seem unfortunate.

FabHK 5y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, he's being warned of being tracked by the AirTag beeping when moved, and displaying information on any NFC capable device (such as most Android phones).
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  AirTags are talking regular Bluetooth 5, not some magic Apple variation of it, right? That would imply my Android phone should be able to see them. For example, I should be able to poke at them using nRF Toolbox app I have installed. (We have only so many iPhone users in Poland, and I currently live in a small town, so I can't just experimentally check it right now.) If that's true, then one should be able to write an app that scans for AirTags in the background and warns you about their presence. I'd hope someone will do this. I'd also hope this would eventually be included in the Android OS itself, perhaps as a generalized facility to detect Tile/AirTag-like devices around you. Long time ago, there were these things called "beacons", that IIRC started with Apple introducing iBeacon spec/protocol. They used BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to announce themselves. Some of those were used for the purpose of tracking your belongings[0]. I assume AirTags must be substantially different from that, because saw zero mentions of the Beacons in articles and discussions about AirTags so far. -- [0] - I even bought a bunch of these on Aliexpress to play with, but didn't want to install the vendor's sketchy app, so I ended up not using them (but I could make them beep and give me some telemetry by poking them over BLE directly). They worked off a CR2032, but there was no "tracking network" back then - you'd connect these tags to your phone, and they'd just start beeping when they disconnected from your phone. A pretty unreliable design, given BLE can be flaky when mixed with apps, battery saving modes, and thick walls in an apartment. Unfortunately, all the non-sketchy makers of BLE beacons seem to have focused entirely on the retailer market - i.e. using them to push spam to your phone as you walk through a mall. I lost all my interest in that technology then.