The Find My Device Network is holding back the true arrival of an 'AirTag for Android'
The Find My Device Network is holding back the true arrival of an 'AirTag for Android'
Item trackers for your smartphone are not a new concept, but Apple changed the game with its AirTag by making...
Aren't the Apple and Android networks supposed to be working together? I thought that's why Google delayed this, because anyone could be tracked without knowing by a tracker on the other network.
Kind of. From what I've heard each network will alert you if it always sees the same tracker from the other network, as a precaution against unwanted tracking / stalking. I don't believe it goes further than that though, as in the networks won't report back all the tags they see on a daily basis to help with location.
Any tag following you = alert
Tag from the other network seen = nothing
They both implemented ways to detect each others tags and warn their users.
Afaik that's as far as it goes.
I got some of those Chipolo trackers shown in the photo. So far I'm pretty disappointed. Based on the locations being reported, I'm pretty sure my phone is the only one in my city working on the Find my Device system, and even that is intermittent. For example, I've left my bike, which has a Chipolo tracker hidden on it, in public places such as a busy train station. After two days on the station platform - with goodness knows how many Android phones passing by - the bike is still showing as being at home in my garage. Like, it didn't even get logged on my own phone as I cycled to the station and left the bike and tracker there. The system really isn't up to speed yet
I personally disabled the feature on my phone when it popped up as available. I don't have much of an interest in contributing to a weird surveillance network.
Despite I admit I might find this feature useful, I wonder what "young" iPhoned generation thinks about it: be part of the surveillance network and ignore any worst case distopic future you can be trapped in, or be at least critical about it and have some kind of doubts and questions? To me it looks like most of them just accept anything and laugh about any critical thought they're offered cause they are in a iTrust world.
Google maps history is not that different and I liked it as long as it's supposed to be really "my private data" but we know it's not, and own cloud data is still something too nerd for the mass.
I just airtagged my dogs - they're escapers. Set it up with my husband's iPhone. I scanned a tag with my android and it gave me the option to erase the tag. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the tag?
Literally the only thing I wished google would copy from apple, and they are managing to screw it up.
