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Using bluetooth to track devices? How is this news. Commercial tools have been available to do just this for a decade. Cities commonly use bluetooth sniffers
by sandworm101 5y ago
Using bluetooth to track devices? How is this news.
Commercial tools have been available to do just this for a decade. Cities commonly use bluetooth sniffers to gather LAPs from passing cars to estimate travel times and detect traffic jams. I'd bet good money that the device used in this article was an ubertooth, a basic tool that I have had in my wifi tricks box for nearly ten years. Such basic sniffers are integrated into any many of commercial solutions. If you are running with your bluetooth system powered on you have effectively opted into every such system.
https://www.atstraffic.ca/ https://www.atstraffic.ca/
"Our advanced queue warning systems use Bluetooth and WiFi to collect information from and about vehicles. If it’s taking longer than normal for vehicles to travel a certain distance, you can alert drivers to change their plans."
- thrashh 5y agoLooks like this publication is about hardware fingerprinting specifically Which you could argue is kind of obvious too I guess cause you can fingerprint anything from someone’s writing style to someone’s installed fonts
- fulafel 5y agoDidn't mobile OSes start randomizing these device addresses some years back, or was that just for wifi?
- GhettoComputers 5y agoThey all do apparently, including iOS. https://petsymposium.org/2019/files/papers/issue3/popets-2019-0036.pdf https://petsymposium.org/2019/files/papers/issue3/popets-201...
- fistynuts 5y agoYou're absolutely right. I'm surprised this isn't more well known. Here's an article from 10 years ago talking about tracking people in airports. https://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2011/04/bluetooth-proves-worth-for-passenger-tracking/ https://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2011/04/bluetooth-pro...
- hnaccount_rng 5y agoBut this isn’t that. That kind of “collect BT MACs” is old news yes. This tracks BT _antennas_ independent of the data that is send out. This basically makes any kind of annonymisation impossible (given sufficiently sensitive equipment sufficiently widely distributed etc). I wouldn’t think that it is a massive problem as most of the “I want to know how fast people move” level of information is simply independent of being able to actually identify the specific person. But maybe I’m underestimating the willingness to grab data or overestimating how sensitive the equipment needs to be to be reliable