Privacy

32173 readers

1279 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Are You Being Tracked by an AirTag? Here’s How to Check (www.wired.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Archive link: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/hWxVX

Owners of newer iPhones should turn on Bluetooth and check their settings to ensure they’ll receive notifications. Under Settings, go to Privacy & Security, and toggle Location Services on. Scroll to the bottom of that page, tap on System Services, and activate Find My iPhone. Also, search for the Find My app, visit Me in the bottom right corner, then tap Customize Tracking Notifications to double-check that notifications are enabled. Also, make sure that you don’t have Airplane mode activated, or you won’t receive any notifications.

When you click on the iPhone alert for an unrecognized AirTag, you may be given the option to play a sound on the AirTag to help locate it. If you own a more recent smartphone from Apple, you might be able to use precision location data to find the hidden device.

Months after the release of the AirTag, Apple launched the Tracker Detect app for Android phones, where users had to initiate the scan. Google and Apple since have continued working together to make it easier for Android phones to detect unwanted AirTag trackers and for Apple phones to spot Android trackers. Recently, Google rolled out automatic smartphone alerts for unknown Bluetooth trackers, similar to what iPhone owners receive for AirTags.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 14 hours ago

I personally use a Samsung Smarttag to track my cat in case she ever manage to get out.

These days, it's not really that good at tracking people. If the tag goes out of range for too long, it randomly starts beeping. Also, if the person that being tracked has a smartphone, iOS or Android, their phone will have a notification if it detect the same bluetooth signal travelling with them for a certain amount of time. The companies had to nerf these trackers because people were complaining about them.

Ironically, if you use a custom OS like a linux phone or Graphene OS, you probably won't get these notifications. (I hope Graphene OS developers know about this by now and tries to implement their own tracker detection in their version of Android.)