Technology

59534 readers

3195 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Google’s expanded Find My Device network might arrive in a few days (www.theverge.com)

submitted 7 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

[–] pastabatman@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is not correct. Android devices can detect apple's air tags and alert users when an unauthorized tag is nearby. Google delayed the launch of their network to wait for Apple to implement the same feature for Android compatible tags, which is finally coming in the next iOS update.

[–] poopkins@lemmy.world -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Android has no way of knowing if a tag is "unauthorized" because Apple does not provision access to their tag network. You could, in principle, ignore tags that you know about, but you'd have to do it by identifying it by some arbitrary hexadecimal GATT ID.

As always, Apple wants to keep it that way, because it gives a poor experience on Android.

Theoretically (and I might be wrong about this), without attempting to reverse engineer how Apple assigns these codes, there would be no to differentiate AirTags, AirPods, iPhones, etc.

[–] pastabatman@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Android detects air tags and notifies users. https://support.google.com/android/answer/13658562?hl=en#zippy=%2Ccompatible-trackers

[–] lud@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

Yeah probably one of the only things Apple and Google could decide on together.

[–] poopkins@lemmy.world -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes, users have begun to be alerted of trackers—this is the recent change by Google as it relates to this post. An ongoing issue is, to my knowledge, that there's no way to identify what kind of device it is. Goggle's instructions literally suggest taking a screenshot of the serial number for later reference.

[–] signalsayge@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I get alerts on my Android for an Airtag I keep in my backpack all the time. My phone gives me the option to make the Airtag play a sound.

[–] poopkins@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Allow me to clarify:

Limited support for AirTags has been added to Android, that is the context of the posted article and the experience you are describing.
Apple neither supports account access on Android devices or provisions access to their tag network on behalf of linked accounts, so unless you have an Apple device, you cannot stipulate that a tag that belongs to you.

Consequently, the solution offered by Google appears to have been effectively built without Apple's support. Goggle's added support for AirTags despite Apple's cooperation—and support for other tracking devices—is a net positive for privacy.