8 ms·

Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.

by noja 5y ago

CharlesW 5y ago
I understand your point and it's completely valid, but I think the difference is that Apple is mainstreaming personal tracking in a way that other companies could only dream of, and in doing so is also mainstreaming awareness of how technologies like this might be abused. Because of this, Apple has painted a giant target on their back even though they're arguably handling privacy issues better than anyone else in this space. On the bright side, the end result of this is that AirTags will be safer for everyone, and competitors with tracking products not designed for secret spying will be forced to step up their privacy games.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  I think what Apple is really mainstreaming is the mass-use of their devices as a low-bitrate, irregular sneakernet. This should replace lots of IoT stuff. It's kinda dumb that our cabin has a 'smart' meter on a meshnetwork, but there's no way for me to remotely turn-on a heater 4h before I arrive without a $10+/month subscription. Maybe one day I can offline order a book and it just shows up because the on-line devices nearby (or are likely to show up nearby) can drop it off wirelessly. A traffic light won't be needing its own internet subscription or private physical network to beam up a picture of the intersection or status.
  - noja 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk
tiarafawn 5y ago
If they need to rely on their own GPS and internet uplink rather than just bluetooth, they would be much more expensive
- Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
  But not that much more even in small quantities. If you exclude the time to dev the software, design the PCB, and assemble the tracker then you can knock up a NB-IOT module + GPS module + Microcontroller & supporting parts (to tie the two modules together) for about $30-$35 in small quantities, keep your data usage low and you can throw in a pre-paid IOT-NB sim for about $15. EDIT: Its not gonna be as small as a AirTag, But if you wanted to tag something like a car you could get it into a small enough box to easily hide under it. EDIT The 2nd: Throw in a movement detector, keep everything asleep unless its moved, before firing up the GPS/modem write your code so not to power up the GPS/Modem up unless a certain time as passed since the last known location fix, when you do fire up the GPS compare the location to the last known location so you only need to phone home if the distance as changed by a certain amount and you could get a decent battery life. (not that I've thought about this...)
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Sure, but I hope it's easy to understand that it's orders of magnitude easier to just buy an AirTag (including "silenced" ones from eBay or wherever) and drop it in someones purse or coat pocket, or attach it to their car. Pretty much no regular stalker is going to design and build their own GPS+cellular tracker. Even if someone were to do that and then sell them online, the barrier to finding and buying those are still probably going to be higher than getting an AirTag. And the battery won't last anywhere near as long as well. And also consider that the software running on it, as well as the cloud service that lets you check the location, doesn't just magically appear either. Someone has to build and host that as well. Even a lower-tech solution that just emails a location report every few minutes still requires work to build. Yes, it's absolutely possible, and not super difficult, to track someone using a GPS+cellular device. But it feels really disingenuous to claim that tracking people was just as easy to do for your average stalker pre-AirTags.
    - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
      > Sure, but I hope it's easy to understand that it's orders of magnitude easier to just buy an AirTag Oh yeah, Was just pointing out that the pricing of such things is dropping like flies. > Pretty much no regular stalker is going to design and build their own GPS+cellular tracker. Agreed, again was just pointing out the pricing of parts. > Yes, it's absolutely possible, and not super difficult, to track someone using a GPS+cellular device. But it feels really disingenuous to claim that tracking people was just as easy to do for your average stalker pre-AirTags. I don't think I did claim that. I wasn't trying to claim that. Maybe thats just the limitation of using text.
giaour 5y ago
You can purchase pre-made GPS+cellular trackers, but it seems like it would be much easier to tie a detected tracker of this type back to a specific person. A tracker with cellular capability will have a SIM and some kind of subpoena-able service record, while one of the pirate AirTags described in the post is basically just an antenna and a battery.
- gruez 5y ago
  >A tracker with cellular capability will have a SIM and some kind of subpoena-able service record Prepaid sim. US (and many other countries) does not have mandatory registration for SIM cards. See: https://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/GSMA_White-Paper_Mandatory-Registration-of-Prepaid-SIM-Users_32pgWEBv3.pdf#page=5 https://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2013/11...
  - giaour 5y ago
    You can buy a prepaid SIM, but it still needs to be activated with the service provider, and it will report the IMEI to the operator as part of maintaining a network connection. If the victim discovers the tracking device and reports it to the police, the police will be able to discover (from the service provider's records) where the SIM was activated and what payment method is used for service. If the SIM was prepaid, the network operator will have a pretty good idea of where it was sold (by tying the SIM number to a wholesale lot number), and that would give police a narrow pool of suspects (whoever bought a prepaid SIM from that seller while the wholesale lot was on their shelves) to work from. If anyone bought a prepaid SIM with cash, they may have been caught on security camera doing so. I guess if the perpetrator bought the SIM online with Monero, investigators might hit a dead end. Compare that to the difficulty of tracking down where a commodity BLE antenna and battery pack were sold.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >it will report the IMEI to the operator as part of maintaining a network connection >Compare that to the difficulty of tracking down where a commodity BLE antenna and battery pack were sold. The ESP (or whatever BLE chipset was used) probably will have a mac address burned in, which is essentially an IMEI. You'll have a hard time getting anything from that, because the aliexpress supply chain that supplied the GSM GPS tracker keeps records and/or responds to US subpoena as well as the aliexpress supply chain that supplied the airtag clone. >If the SIM was prepaid, the network operator will have a pretty good idea of where it was sold (by tying the SIM number to a wholesale lot number), and that would give police a narrow pool of suspects (whoever bought a prepaid SIM from that seller while the wholesale lot was on their shelves) to work from. It was sold from a mobile phone kiosk at a mall >what payment method is used for service voucher purchased at the same store, both paid with cash >If anyone bought a prepaid SIM with cash, they may have been caught on security camera doing so. the purchase/activation of the sim occurred a month or two ago, outside of the retention range of the surveillance footage. even if the footage exists, all you'd see is a masked (thanks covid!) 5'8" white possibly hispanic male, wearing a hoodie and jeans.
eyeeyesawayyy 5y ago
Airtags are unique in that they use every iphone in the world as part of the network which tracks them and reports their locations. So, unlike GPS trackers or competing Bluetooth trackers, AirTags can do two things: * Last for a very long time on a small battery, no recharging required. * Reliably report location anywhere in the world that an ordinary person is likely to be.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  I've always been sceptical of this working well enough to be usable. Does the average iphone owner leave their bluetooth, gps, and mobile network on 24/7? Sounds like an awful waste of power. What about in the rest of the world outside the US, Canada and Australia where Android is the market leader and iphones are rather rare? What happens inside buildings when the phone doesn't have a fix? Does it store the tag's key and sends it as soon as it gets gps data?
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    AirTags exist and they work perfectly fine in all these conditions. We would need to turn the clock back a few years for this comment to make sense, in an universe where AirTags didn't yet exist. Your phone takes it's last position from GPS, refines it with RSSI of nearby WiFi networks and then you add in the broadband stuff they have to localize the tag further.
  - planb 5y ago
    > Does the average iphone owner leave their bluetooth, gps, and mobile network on 24/7? Yes of course. That's how these phones are supposed to work. I don't have time to micromanage my devices. As long as I get a day of usage, why would I bother?
  - jimjambw 5y ago
    Why wouldn't you leave those things on? Apple designed iOS for those things to be handled and turned on when needed. BLE is quite low in power, GPS is only on when location services need it. These are concerns I would have had about 10-15 years ago, but I don't now.
015a 5y ago
Other trackers don't have a backdoor into a global network of a billion iOS devices in order to relay the device's location to a cellular network, and thus, the original owner. They were safer because they were small; things such as this do not always scale linearly, which is a fact Apple's leadership doesn't seem to respect.

Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.

by noja 5y ago

Other trackers don't tell you they are tracking you though, what about those.

I understand your point and it's completely valid, but I think the difference is that Apple is mainstreaming personal tracking in a way that other companies could only dream of, and in doing so is also mainstreaming awareness of how technologies like this might be abused. Because of this, Apple has painted a giant target on their back even though they're arguably handling privacy issues better than anyone else in this space. On the bright side, the end result of this is that AirTags will be safer for everyone, and competitors with tracking products not designed for secret spying will be forced to step up their privacy games.

Scoundreller 5y ago
I think what Apple is really mainstreaming is the mass-use of their devices as a low-bitrate, irregular sneakernet. This should replace lots of IoT stuff. It's kinda dumb that our cabin has a 'smart' meter on a meshnetwork, but there's no way for me to remotely turn-on a heater 4h before I arrive without a $10+/month subscription. Maybe one day I can offline order a book and it just shows up because the on-line devices nearby (or are likely to show up nearby) can drop it off wirelessly. A traffic light won't be needing its own internet subscription or private physical network to beam up a picture of the intersection or status.
- noja 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk

tiarafawn 5y ago

If they need to rely on their own GPS and internet uplink rather than just bluetooth, they would be much more expensive

Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
But not that much more even in small quantities. If you exclude the time to dev the software, design the PCB, and assemble the tracker then you can knock up a NB-IOT module + GPS module + Microcontroller & supporting parts (to tie the two modules together) for about $30-$35 in small quantities, keep your data usage low and you can throw in a pre-paid IOT-NB sim for about $15. EDIT: Its not gonna be as small as a AirTag, But if you wanted to tag something like a car you could get it into a small enough box to easily hide under it. EDIT The 2nd: Throw in a movement detector, keep everything asleep unless its moved, before firing up the GPS/modem write your code so not to power up the GPS/Modem up unless a certain time as passed since the last known location fix, when you do fire up the GPS compare the location to the last known location so you only need to phone home if the distance as changed by a certain amount and you could get a decent battery life. (not that I've thought about this...)
- kelnos 5y ago
  Sure, but I hope it's easy to understand that it's orders of magnitude easier to just buy an AirTag (including "silenced" ones from eBay or wherever) and drop it in someones purse or coat pocket, or attach it to their car. Pretty much no regular stalker is going to design and build their own GPS+cellular tracker. Even if someone were to do that and then sell them online, the barrier to finding and buying those are still probably going to be higher than getting an AirTag. And the battery won't last anywhere near as long as well. And also consider that the software running on it, as well as the cloud service that lets you check the location, doesn't just magically appear either. Someone has to build and host that as well. Even a lower-tech solution that just emails a location report every few minutes still requires work to build. Yes, it's absolutely possible, and not super difficult, to track someone using a GPS+cellular device. But it feels really disingenuous to claim that tracking people was just as easy to do for your average stalker pre-AirTags.
  - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
    > Sure, but I hope it's easy to understand that it's orders of magnitude easier to just buy an AirTag Oh yeah, Was just pointing out that the pricing of such things is dropping like flies. > Pretty much no regular stalker is going to design and build their own GPS+cellular tracker. Agreed, again was just pointing out the pricing of parts. > Yes, it's absolutely possible, and not super difficult, to track someone using a GPS+cellular device. But it feels really disingenuous to claim that tracking people was just as easy to do for your average stalker pre-AirTags. I don't think I did claim that. I wasn't trying to claim that. Maybe thats just the limitation of using text.

giaour 5y ago

You can purchase pre-made GPS+cellular trackers, but it seems like it would be much easier to tie a detected tracker of this type back to a specific person. A tracker with cellular capability will have a SIM and some kind of subpoena-able service record, while one of the pirate AirTags described in the post is basically just an antenna and a battery.

gruez 5y ago
>A tracker with cellular capability will have a SIM and some kind of subpoena-able service record Prepaid sim. US (and many other countries) does not have mandatory registration for SIM cards. See: https://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/GSMA_White-Paper_Mandatory-Registration-of-Prepaid-SIM-Users_32pgWEBv3.pdf#page=5 https://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2013/11...
- giaour 5y ago
  You can buy a prepaid SIM, but it still needs to be activated with the service provider, and it will report the IMEI to the operator as part of maintaining a network connection. If the victim discovers the tracking device and reports it to the police, the police will be able to discover (from the service provider's records) where the SIM was activated and what payment method is used for service. If the SIM was prepaid, the network operator will have a pretty good idea of where it was sold (by tying the SIM number to a wholesale lot number), and that would give police a narrow pool of suspects (whoever bought a prepaid SIM from that seller while the wholesale lot was on their shelves) to work from. If anyone bought a prepaid SIM with cash, they may have been caught on security camera doing so. I guess if the perpetrator bought the SIM online with Monero, investigators might hit a dead end. Compare that to the difficulty of tracking down where a commodity BLE antenna and battery pack were sold.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >it will report the IMEI to the operator as part of maintaining a network connection >Compare that to the difficulty of tracking down where a commodity BLE antenna and battery pack were sold. The ESP (or whatever BLE chipset was used) probably will have a mac address burned in, which is essentially an IMEI. You'll have a hard time getting anything from that, because the aliexpress supply chain that supplied the GSM GPS tracker keeps records and/or responds to US subpoena as well as the aliexpress supply chain that supplied the airtag clone. >If the SIM was prepaid, the network operator will have a pretty good idea of where it was sold (by tying the SIM number to a wholesale lot number), and that would give police a narrow pool of suspects (whoever bought a prepaid SIM from that seller while the wholesale lot was on their shelves) to work from. It was sold from a mobile phone kiosk at a mall >what payment method is used for service voucher purchased at the same store, both paid with cash >If anyone bought a prepaid SIM with cash, they may have been caught on security camera doing so. the purchase/activation of the sim occurred a month or two ago, outside of the retention range of the surveillance footage. even if the footage exists, all you'd see is a masked (thanks covid!) 5'8" white possibly hispanic male, wearing a hoodie and jeans.

eyeeyesawayyy 5y ago

Airtags are unique in that they use every iphone in the world as part of the network which tracks them and reports their locations. So, unlike GPS trackers or competing Bluetooth trackers, AirTags can do two things: * Last for a very long time on a small battery, no recharging required. * Reliably report location anywhere in the world that an ordinary person is likely to be.

moffkalast 5y ago
I've always been sceptical of this working well enough to be usable. Does the average iphone owner leave their bluetooth, gps, and mobile network on 24/7? Sounds like an awful waste of power. What about in the rest of the world outside the US, Canada and Australia where Android is the market leader and iphones are rather rare? What happens inside buildings when the phone doesn't have a fix? Does it store the tag's key and sends it as soon as it gets gps data?
- stefan_ 5y ago
  AirTags exist and they work perfectly fine in all these conditions. We would need to turn the clock back a few years for this comment to make sense, in an universe where AirTags didn't yet exist. Your phone takes it's last position from GPS, refines it with RSSI of nearby WiFi networks and then you add in the broadband stuff they have to localize the tag further.
- planb 5y ago
  > Does the average iphone owner leave their bluetooth, gps, and mobile network on 24/7? Yes of course. That's how these phones are supposed to work. I don't have time to micromanage my devices. As long as I get a day of usage, why would I bother?
- jimjambw 5y ago
  Why wouldn't you leave those things on? Apple designed iOS for those things to be handled and turned on when needed. BLE is quite low in power, GPS is only on when location services need it. These are concerns I would have had about 10-15 years ago, but I don't now.

015a 5y ago

Other trackers don't have a backdoor into a global network of a billion iOS devices in order to relay the device's location to a cellular network, and thus, the original owner. They were safer because they were small; things such as this do not always scale linearly, which is a fact Apple's leadership doesn't seem to respect.