Apple, Google propose anti-stalking spec for Bluetooth tracker tags

Apple and Google have come together to develop an industry specification to prevent "unwanted tracking," otherwise known as stalking, via Bluetooth location tracking tags. Though Tile has been selling Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless tracking tags for a decade, it wasn't until 2021, when Samsung introduced its Galaxy …

[claimed]

Anti theft

As always there is a white hat version. Hopefully the spec allows for some kind of “you were near this Bluetooth thingy recently, it’s owner says it is on a stolen item - click to report” baked in, without a custom URL so that you can still slip a tracker into a bag/motorcycle and hope it goes past a Good Samaritan and not just the thief. It’s then also evidence against a stalker if you accidentally report theirs, all cloudy and that

Otherwise it’s the end of “thieves stole my X, police did nothing, I found it” stories

[CowHorseFrog]

Nobody needs these tags, we all managed just fine before they appeared.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, that's why they can barely keep up with sales.

I have them in the flight cases for the camera, and not only does that ensure I know where they are, Apple's implementation also allows me to set up an alert for when they move away from that known location.

Yes, I know lots of people talk about stalking, but I'd love to know how many thefts have been solved as a result of their existence.

[SundogUK]

I don't know what your cameras are worth but it's probably not as much as a persons life.

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't care about other people's privacy, only their own money.

How do you know you're a 1st World? Taking part in a global spy net which has been used to murder people only to keep your money safe.

my_money > others_lives

[John Riddoch]

I've heard of someone's stolen bike being abandoned after a short drive, presumably their phone alerted them with the "someone's air tag is following you" warning. In that regard, they're a great idea, it's a shame horrible people have abused them for some awful purpose. My worry is that if Apple, Google et al come out with a "safe" implementation which prevents the stalking, other less scrupulous companies will still sell the stalker's version. In any event, there will still be thousands (millions?) of the old versions which will presumably not be made immediately obsolete.

[MiguelC]

"someone's air tag is following you"

also alerts the thief that the stolen item has a tracker attached, they can abandon the item or they can search and dispose of the tracker

[Ideasource]

Re: "someone's air tag is following you"

If abandoned with tracker intact then the owner can still retrieve it.

Granted that doesn't provide any vengeance solutions upon the perpetrator, but vengeance is not a healthy impulse to indulge anyway, so even better that the opportunity is removed.

If tracker removed, then that sucks. But not the end of the world . Life goes on.

The occasional theft is a natural cost to the personal business of having stuff and letting it be seen in public.

Right or wrong it's never been completely preventable in any society yet.

So regardless how you feel about it,

Still business as usual.

Plan for theft same as you would set aside redundancies for any mission critical resource.

If it has personal or emotional significance, keep it out of sight. It is counterproductive to advertise the existence of something that is not for others.

Taking things personally only magnifies suffering in the one who is taking something personally.

It does nothing to help anybody.

[Michael Wojcik]

if Apple, Google et al come out with a "safe" implementation which prevents the stalking,

Using ... magic, perhaps? How does a tracking device determine motive? And thieves had more motive than most folks for checking things like the warning apps.

other less scrupulous companies will still sell the stalker's version

There have already been demonstrations on sites like Hackaday on how Apple's warning mechanism can be disabled. And, yes, producing a non-conforming BLE tracker is hardly going to be difficult.

The idea with AirTags and some of the other systems is that the real value is in the network, and apparently the hope here is that phone manufacturers will try to prevent non-complying trackers from using the network. I suppose that helps somewhat, but stalkers can fall back on good old phone-home GPS trackers, which after all don't need to be all that much larger, depending on how much battery life you want the thing to have.

[ratcatcher67]

Who needs trackers when we have FaceBook for Stalking...

[ratcatcher67]

I heard a Woman in hackey has Dentists furious with her homegrown teeth whitening remedy

[ratcatcher67]

If it was positive then no doubt they would never stop chuntering on about it.

[Michael Wojcik]

Nobody needs these tags, we all managed just fine before they appeared.

How can you say that? The vast majority of human beings born before these things were invented are now dead. Clearly a lack of find-my-shit widgets is fatal.

[doublelayer]

"Nobody needs these tags, we all managed just fine before they appeared."

Nobody needs computers, we all managed just fine before they appeared. Computers can help someone who wants to kill someone else. Smash all the computers today.

You'll need better logic than "at one point we didn't have X, so X should be forbidden".

[steviebuk]

I don't like them but they have their uses. Once guy stuck one in his bag for a flight and saw his luggage stay at the airport. When he mentioned it was missing they said they couldn't find it, he had to keep telling them he could see it back at the airport. Eventually they "magically" found it.

[Neil Barnes]

Not that I have any reason for concern

But how does this work if you're not part of the infrastructure? I'm assuming that to locate a tracker, it has to be visible to a phone that is permanently watching for it? So an apple tracker needs to talk to an apple phone; an android tracker to an android phone? Or are they ecumenical and talk to both?

With the secondary issue that if you don't carry a phone, or carry one with things locked down until they're needed (bluetooth, location etc) then how do the changes help you know you're being tracked?

Am I missing something blindingly obvious here?

(This post may contain my highest ever question mark count!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not that I have any reason for concern

Quote: "...I'm assuming that to locate a tracker, it has to be visible to a phone that is permanently watching for it?..."

@Neil_Barnes

Take a look at the Apple "Find My" page.

(1) User registers tracker

(2) ALL Apple phones start looking (via Bluetooth) for that tracker

(3) When anyone's phone locates the tracker, the phone tells Apple Central that the tracker has been found

(4) When (eventually) the original user switches on their phone, Apple Central transmits the good news

Another quote (William Burroughs): "The paranoid is a person who knows a little of what is going on."

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Not that I have any reason for concern

That was what I had understood. So an addendum to an apple phone OS isn't going to help anyone who doesn't have such a phone.

[Zolko]

Re: Not that I have any reason for concern

(2) ALL Apple phones start looking (via Bluetooth) for that tracker

(3) When anyone's phone locates the tracker, the phone tells Apple Central that the tracker has been found

wait ... and what about people who don't want to be part of that network ? Does Apple and his customers automatically have the right to access your phone and its location to call Apple Central ? Said otherwise, me who doesn't have such a tracker and my GPS and Bluetooth is always off, am I part unwillingly of that network ? And If I switch GPS and Bluetooth on for other reasons, am I automatically connected to that network ?

[doublelayer]

Re: Not that I have any reason for concern

If you have an iPhone, yes you are part of that network. With Bluetooth disabled, you're not a useful part of the network, but if you turn it on, you will start connecting. If this displeases you, you might want to turn the Find My Network setting off. I'm sure the information that you had to opt out of the network was in the terms you had to agree to to use the iPhone. You can decide whether you're comfortable with that or not.

[Cuddles]

Re: Not that I have any reason for concern

"So an apple tracker needs to talk to an apple phone; an android tracker to an android phone? Or are they ecumenical and talk to both?"

It's just bluetooth. Apple's implementation is part of their OS while you need to install an app on Android or for non-Apple trackers on iOS, but other than that all phones are capable of talking to any tracker from any manufacturer. There's even an official app from Apple for Android phones. The point of the new collaboration appears to be mainly about treating all trackers equivalently, so you won't need to install an app for each separate manufacturer to be sure you're finding them all.

"With the secondary issue that if you don't carry a phone, or carry one with things locked down until they're needed (bluetooth, location etc) then how do the changes help you know you're being tracked?"

Obviously they don't. If you don't carry a phone, devices that only work by communicating with a phone will not work for you. Although for having a phone but keeping it locked down, they mainly get around that by simply lying to you. Note that the article talks about still using bluetooth to find your phone even when you think you've turned it off. Just because you think you've turned off bluetooth and location doesn't mean your phone can't actually use bluetooth and location. There's a reason people like hardware switches and physical covers for webcams.

[Anonymous Coward]

Find My......even when your phone is switched off.....

....so says the Apple web site about "Find My".

This report seems to show that Find My also works even when EVERYONE ELSE'S phone is switched off.......

......because these phones are all active even when switched off.

......and of course the Apple "cloud" services are NEVER switched off!

Perhaps there's a whiff of NSA activity in these findings?

Quote (William Burroughs): "The paranoid is a person who knows a little of what is going on."

[Johnb89]

Ah the days when you could take the battery out

When I turn my phone 'off' I, stupidly, had in mind that it was 'off'. Silly me. A bit like "it depends what the meaning of 'is' is" for those that remember.

So now in Apple land, turning on airplane mode doesn't turn off the radios (wifi and/or bluetooth can stay on even when activating airplane mode) and turning the phone off doesn't turn the radios off. Non obvious modes of operation that I would have thought break 'no radios when flying' law.

Not to lessen the issue of these tags... I'm just venting about how I'm not allowed to control my device.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Ah the days when you could take the battery out

Remember when phones had removable batteries? Good times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ah the days when you could take the battery out

@Johnb89

Switch it off....and then wrap it in two layers of aluminium foil........

.....but, of course, all bets are off when you unwrap it and switch it on again!!!!!!

Quote (William Burroughs): "The paranoid is a person who knows a little of what is going on."

[doublelayer]

Re: Ah the days when you could take the battery out

"'no radios when flying' law."

The regulation is not that restrictive. WiFi and Bluetooth may still be used, as demonstrated by all the planes that have installed WiFi. What can't be used, and therefore what is turned off by the airplane mode switch, is cellular connectivity. There are separate switches for WiFi and Bluetooth which can be used to disable those. While it's possible they will be changed later to not reflect your setting, they do disable the features at the moment, which you can check with a cheap radio analysis tool.

[big_D]

Poor option

The thing is, the Apple AirTags are already the worst possible option of all the tags out there, if you want to covertly follow someone. iPhones in the vicinity bleet about them and if you are worried, there is an Android app to monitor for tags in the area.

Other, older tags don't inform you that they are nearby, they are stealthy by design and I doubt that will change much with this initiative. The genuine lost item trackers will conform to the new standard and the real people tracking tags will continue to be silent.

The only benefit that the Apple AirTags brought was ease of use for stalkers with fewer than 2 brain cells to rub together.

[Richard 12]

Re: Poor option

The network is why these work.

In the old days, a tracker had to have a GPS receiver and a cellular modem. That uses a lot of power so it also needs a huge battery or external power supply.

These BLE trackers don't need much of a battery and are incredibly small because the GPS and cellular modem is in the pocket of random passers by.

If there are no nearby phones actively looking for a particular brand of tracker, it will not work at all.

[ratcatcher67]

Now Google wants in on the Stalking...

[steviebuk]

Found one

That I assume was used to track or stalk someone. Was on the floor in a Sainsburys car park. Took it home and eventually (took ages as the Android app just refused to read it) got it to scan and it showed part of the number but that's it. No "I'm lost message". I left it for a few days, still no "I'm lost message". Left it for another 2 weeks, still no "I'm lost message". I took the battery out and its still sat in a draw. I was thinking of picking a random car and sticking it to it.