Bluetooth-enabled location trackers such as Tiles and AirTags aren’t just a helpful way to find missing luggage or a misplaced wallet—they can also be easily slipped surreptitiously into a bag or car, allowing stalkers and abusers unprecedented access to a person’s location without their knowledge. At EFF, we have been sounding the alarm about this threat to people, especially survivors of domestic abuse, for a long time.
Now, there’s finally an industry discussion happening about the best methods of preventing unwanted trackers. The most effective way to prevent physical trackers from being used as stalking devices against most people is through tracking alerts. If a physical tracker is out of range of the phone that it is paired to, and it’s moving with you, you should get an alert about it.
Apple rolled out AirTags with some rudimentary anti-stalking mitigations: a tracking alert that worked for iPhone users and a beep from the AirTag that was worryingly easy to muffle or disable and which did not go off until the AirTag had been out of range of the phone it was paired to for three days. Since then, Apple has improved its mitigations by cutting down the time until the beep goes off and by putting out an Android app that can be used to scan for unwanted AirTags in the vicinity. In the meantime, Tile took one step forward by adding tracker detection to its app, and then one step back by creating an “anti-theft mode” that turned that detection off. As of right now, none of the other physical trackers on the market have any anti-stalking mitigations at all.
Recently, Google announced that it was rolling out Bluetooth tracking detection for Android. The new capability only detects AirTags at the moment, but it’s still a major step forward for people who may be followed by physical trackers. Android users will no longer have to download an app and run a scan to detect unwanted AirTags—it will all happen in the background.
Detecting AirTags is just the begin
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