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- Hacker News
- It isn't that difficult to just not lose things.
People love to over complicate their lives with technology, giving up money and privacy in the process.
by user00005 - There are plenty of times when you have to trust someone(s) else with your belongings, sometimes for a very long time - say, airline baggage, bus luggage compartment, hotel left luggage, or gym lockers - and it's useful to have a tracker (ideally a more secure one, e.g. AirTag) in case anything goes wrong.
And even if you're the type of person who never lets their bags leave their sight, nobody is immune to their keys slipping out of their pocket in a taxi.
by rafram - What the hell is Tile?by mawadev
- Thats what google is for.by alt227
- AirTag alternativeby internet2000
- If AirTag is a CD, Tile is 8 track.by brookst
- cross-platform forerunner of the Apple AirTagby evanjrowley
- "But, but, the Tile TOS says they'll fine a stalker a million dollars!"
Life360 is such a skeevy bullshit company.
by kotaKat - BBP;DR (Broken Bot Protection; Didn't Read)
Loops forever at
blog.adafruit.com Performing security verification This website uses a security service to protect against malicious bots. This page is displayed while the website verifies you are not a bot.
- > Loops forever
And so it should, given:
> while the website verifies you are not a bot.
is impossible to complete.
by chrisjj - Passing the security verification succeeded for me (firefox on a mac, with ublock origin).by stackghost
- I never understood this. You can pass turnstile challenges on tor browser in a linux/windows VM, of all things. What unusual browser config are people using to trigger a block?by gruez
- Does anyone know whether https://mygrid.app/ is trustworthy? Development had been glacial, but looking at their website it seems they finally support degoogled android which is a huge step forwards.by kefabean
- This explains why I'm seeing commercials for Life360 now for the first time ever: They've developed a new revenue stream by selling everybody's location to advertisers.
Now deleted from my family's phones.
- Whats the connection between an advertiser knowing your location, and ads from Life360?by alt227
- That was always the revenue stream, the devices were just a way to get you to give it to them. It's been a minute since I was current on who gets what in the HMD world but I think that data ultimately flows to Placer.aiby PLenz
- I dont get why this is really an issue when there are devices on Temu you can easily buy that are actually designed for stalking. Why would anybody with a genuine nefarious purpose spend their time hacking a tile when they can just buy a generic Chinese gps transponder?by alt227
- Because it serves a nefarious purpose: to smear the company that makes these devices. I would not be surprised if this is part of some kind of campaign designed to restrict or damage someone.by braiamp
- Criminals, particularly heavily disordered ones like stalkers, are usually not the smartest people in the world. So increasing the barrier of entry just a little bit might substantially decrease their practical access to this type of technology.
- In that case you have to plant the transponder yourself.
In the case of Tile, everyone using Tile has tagged themselves (unknowingly) for you.
The consumer who didn't know they tagged themselves would understandably have a complaint.
by duxup - Suppose the person you want to stalk has bought a Tile that they use for themselves, not knowing that these devices are insecure. If you scan for that device, you can follow that person without even having to plant a device on them. You don't have to hack their Tile.by mplewis
- Generic GPS transponder (containing GPS receiver + some kind of data connection) will have limited battery life.
Systems like Tile, AirTag can last much longer with smaller battery and overall dimensions by offloading GPS and long data transmission to other devices. Strength(and dangers) of devices like this is in the size of tracking network not necessarily the hardware itself. Even better if you don't have to plant the tracker onto victim, because victim bought it and is intentionally carrying with themselves.
by Karliss - by zidel
- It's interesting to me that other trackers have end-to-end encryption. I wouldn't have expected it but makes sense for the threat model.
> Providerslike Apple and Google achieve location indistinguishability by end-to-end encrypting location information using a public key embedded in BLE advertisements emitted by a tag
Though it makes me wonder... What's the private key? If the public key is attached to the tag, how is the device getting it? I'm guessing it gets shared during pairing.
by ollien - AFAIK, there's a pre-shared key exchanged during pairing, and you then calculate keypairs based on (key, timestamp).
Rotating your keypairs in that way prevents attackers from identifying you across time. E.G. if they link a particular keypair to you — let's say at an Airport security gate — that doesn't let them know you've entered a lawyer's office a week later, because that's done under a different, unrelated public key.
by miki123211 - In general, yes! We did some follow on work explaining how all of this works, depending on the provider: https://petsymposium.org/popets/2026/popets-2026-0113.pdfby mspecter
- Last author on the paper here (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.00350). Happy to answer any questions!by mspecter
- Thanks! Have you considered evaluating the “AppClose” platform in a similar fashion? It is used in family / civil cases to my knowledge. Perhaps another worthwhile avenue of study, perhaps not. Thank you for your time.by 6stringmerc
- Also, I'm just the professor, the grad students on it are the real heroes: Akshaya Kumar [1] and Anna Raymaker [2].by mspecter