Meet Moeco, Ukrainian-led biz using IoT trackers to follow supplies into invaded land

When Russia invaded her native country, Ukrainian expat Alexa Sinyachova was immediately inundated with requests from friends and business partners asking what they could do to help.  Sinyachova was in a perfect position to lend assistance as the CEO of Moeco, a five-year-old startup developing wireless trackers that can be …

[Dinanziame]

I'm reminded of the Apple airtags, except that this solution directly sends its location over 4G instead of relying on nearby iPhones... And somehow seems cheaper as well. Which, of course, directly leads to questions about the potential uses for stalking.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

I thought similar. I saw an interesting video on YouTube a while ago where somebody mailed out a load of packages each with an Airtag in - it was very interesting to compare the actual packages' tracks versus what was reported by the courier companies.

As the the price differential...one of the products you're comparing has an Apple logo on, so any side-by-side comparison is going to be skewed.

[DJO]

...And somehow seems cheaper as well. Which, of course, directly leads to questions about the potential uses for stalking...

I suspect you only get that low price if you are buying hundreds or thousands of the items, I also suspect they are not interested in selling smaller quantities.

I suppose a third party could buy batches and resell in ones or twos to individuals but they would have to manage the tracking data so it "should" be possible to recognize when tags are being used illicitly.

But you are missing the essence of the story: An IoT application which isn't pointless crap.

[Metro-Gnome]

Deposits and re-usable

With 95% of journey's being single direction a return deposit scheme, as old pop-bottles had, would see them coming back for reuse efficiently and save materials and energy resources.

Not hugely consumerist but still providing all the data to harvest and allowing for more robust and better communicating tags.

[MacroRodent]

Re: Deposits and re-usable

I also wonder if they will run out of cellular phone numbers if the disposable tags connect via cellular networks and there are millions of tags. Of course you can reuse the number if the tag is disposed or otherwise rendered inactive, but you don't know when that happens, unless the end-of-life is managed somehow. The deposit you propose would be one good solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Deposits and re-usable

I hear Amazon are going to put trackers on those pop bottles so they can track their driver's, ahem, 'stop off' points

[Jim Mitchell]

I thought this was going to be an article about attaching trackers to Russian supplies, so they could be bombed.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was ...

Except, if the Russian hacker crews are good enough, it might turn out to be about snooping on trackers attached to Ukrainian supplies, so they could be bombed. :-/

[Jim Mitchell]

Re: I thought this was ...

You need to put a tracker on the guy who is going to put a tracker on your stuff so you can track him before he tracks you. Unless your opponent then puts a tracker on your tracker tracker so the tracker knows the tracker tracker is coming to track him.

Hiring a tracker hacker to just track the other guys tracker directly does seem easier.