Bluetooth Tags For Android's 3 Billion-Strong Tracking Network Are Here (arstechnica.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After the release of Apple's AirTags, Google suddenly has interest in the Bluetooth tracker market. The company has already quietly rolled out what must be the world's largest Bluetooth tracking network via Android's 3 billion active devices, and now trackers are starting to plug in to that network. Google is taking the ecosystem approach and letting various companies plug in to the Android Bluetooth tracking network, which has the very derivative name of "Find My Device." While these Bluetooth trackers are great for finding your lost car keys on a messy desk, they can also work as worldwide GPS trackers and locate items much farther away, even though they don't have GPS. The IDs of Bluetooth devices are public, so Tile started this whole idea of crowdsourced Bluetooth tracker location, called the "Tile Network." Every phone with the Tile app installed scans Bluetooth devices in the background and, using the phone GPS, uploads their last seen location to the cloud. This location data is only available to the person who owns the Tile, but every Tile user works to scan the environment and upload any Tiles the app can see. [...]
Now, third-party Bluetooth trackers for Android's network are starting to arrive. The two companies that have announced products are Chipolo and Pebblebee, both of which seem to be cloning the Tile line of products. Both offer normal keychain tracker tags and slim credit card format trackers. The worst habits of Tile include making completely disposable products because the batteries can't be changed, but it looks like our clones have mostly avoided that. All of Pebblebee's Find My Device products are rechargeable, which is great, while the Chipolo keychain tracker has a replaceable CR2032 battery. Only the Chipolo wallet tracker is disposable (boo!). All these tags will show up in the Find My Device app, right alongside your Android phones, headphones, and whatever else you have that plugs in to the network. They also have a speaker, like normal, so you can make them ring when you're near them. Both sets of products are up for preorder now.
Now, third-party Bluetooth trackers for Android's network are starting to arrive. The two companies that have announced products are Chipolo and Pebblebee, both of which seem to be cloning the Tile line of products. Both offer normal keychain tracker tags and slim credit card format trackers. The worst habits of Tile include making completely disposable products because the batteries can't be changed, but it looks like our clones have mostly avoided that. All of Pebblebee's Find My Device products are rechargeable, which is great, while the Chipolo keychain tracker has a replaceable CR2032 battery. Only the Chipolo wallet tracker is disposable (boo!). All these tags will show up in the Find My Device app, right alongside your Android phones, headphones, and whatever else you have that plugs in to the network. They also have a speaker, like normal, so you can make them ring when you're near them. Both sets of products are up for preorder now.
Great news! (Score:4, Funny)
This is great because I felt neglected and not tracked enough. At least now maybe somebody is going to give me attention and care about what I do thanks to these great new tracking tags.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a fundamental conflict between wanting to find your stuff even if it gets stolen, and wanting to not be tracked by other people.
At least this is an open standard now, so it will make it harder to stalk people with AirTags and the like. It also means that competition with Apple is more feasible since new entrants in the market don't have to build their own networks.
Google is interested in tracking. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Google is interested in tracking. (Score:2)
Tile (Score:2)
What is the difference between this an Tile? I though Tile was essentially Airtags but for Android (and not from Apple).
Re:Tile (Score:4, Interesting)
BLE tags use a compatible phone to report their location back to a central service, but unless you had an Apple Airtag [or AirTag compatible], your tags would only be picked up by other phones with the Tile app installed. This is of course fine if you're just keeping track of your keys and other household items, but Apple Airtags are really popular to slip into luggage, packages, and other valuables as a cheaper [and far smaller] alternative to SMS/GPS trackers.
These new tags use a component in Google Play Services [installed on every Android phone with the Google Play store], instead of the Tile app, making them, at least on paper, as good or better than Airtags, and far more reliable than Tile tags for remote tracking.
Instead of waiting for a phone with the Tile app installed to come by, now any android phone can pick up and report these tags back.
There's the whole problem of privacy, security, etc involving any BLE tag, but that's a whole different can of worms..
Re: (Score:2)
In addition, Apple has joined the open standard for these things, so Android devices will detect AirTags and hopefully vice-versa. It seems that issues with stalking pretty much forced them to join it.
Re: Tile (Score:2)
Only available (Score:3)
>"This location data is only available to the person who owns the Tile"
Um, yeah right. If you don't count Tile, Title's systems, Tile's employees, Tile's "trusted vendors", people who might hack Tile, three-letter agencies with backdoors, etc.
Of course, you kinda do this already with your phone- giving away your location to your carrier, your OS and associated apps, etc. Not sure this makes things that much worse, if it attached to something always or usually with you.
Re: (Score:3)
In terms of your personal location, you're already compromised by the OS. Your phone carrier isn't really a concern, generally they aren't releasing that kind of data without the police or a court being involved and most of us just aren't that important.
What this new system is doing is adding a whole new level of detail to that tracking, so that not only is your location tracked by your phone, but it's now tracked by every phone around you as well. And it's not just your location, but the independent loca
Re: (Score:2)
>"What this new system is doing is adding a whole new level of detail to that tracking, so that not only is your location tracked by your phone, but it's now tracked by every phone around you as well
Well, not really. Other phones are just tracking tags without the person or the phone having any idea what that tag is, or who it belongs to. They don't have access to the database to make any confidential association.
>"And it's not just your location, but the independent location of every item of value
Re: (Score:3)
>Other phones are just tracking tags without the person or the phone having any idea what that tag is, or who it belongs to. They don't have access to the database to make any confidential association.
Google or Apple have the database.
>Yeah, but like I said, most of the things we would want to "tag" are things we take with us anyway, along with our phone that is already tracked. Keys, wallet, phone, laptop, etc. So I am not sure it matters that much.
You may want to hold off on finalizing that opinion
Re: (Score:2)
>"Or... I could just capture all the tags around me until I find one associated with someone I want to stalk. "
OK, that is an excellent example of how it could be abused. I had not thought of that and it is pretty scary.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like it was impossible until now, but what these tags are doing is bringing the difficulty level down to a point where anyone can do it.
how many of those are low end? (Score:1)
Tile never really worked (Score:1)
I bought a tile kit but found them too unreliable to be of practical use. Probably because you are relying on people running the tile app.
Beaconing BLE devices are a very different proposition if the Android OS is doing the tracking.
Like the AI boom, lots of room for good, lots of room for evil!
Re: (Score:2)
Tile is great for figuring out which couch cushion has your keys.
its not great for finding who stole your luggage.
Preorder != Here (Score:2)
Nothing will ship before mid-July. That's not my definition of here.
I was actually kinda excited because I would like some of these, but they don't even ship before we've left for our vacation.
Re: (Score:2)
THIS. Nothing is "here". Tile's network is completely useless as basically nobody has the app (MAYBE in the future they'll get their position updated by all Androids but nope). The preorder things aren't probably vaporware and if Google is joining the trend and turns on by default the "sniffing" on all devices they'll work great in the end but they just aren't there, nobody has seen any of them, and so on.
The only real alternative to Apple's are the Samsung ones, they work well (probably depends on the regi
Will it work with existing low cost BT trackers? (Score:1)
This is how it started, ended with Shmi ... (Score:2)