Received notice of a change to the service in my inbox today. Seems icky to me.
Devices in the network use Bluetooth to scan for nearby items. If other devices detect your items, they’ll securely send the locations where the items were detected to Find My Device. Your Android devices will do the same to help others find their offline items when detected nearby
Your devices’ locations will be encrypted using the PIN, pattern, or password for your Android devices. They can only be seen by you and those you share your devices with in Find My Device. They will not be visible to Google or used for other purposes.
ETA: here’s the link to opt out: opt out of the network
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This is what apple has done for years but nobody complainted
You at least know your paying for it with apple. Googles customers won’t be the ones using this service.
As a Google customer. I’m actually ecstatic about this. If it’s anywhere near as good as Apples then that’s a huge boon for us
What do you mean? This service from google is for android devices and hence google devices.
Google’s customers are advertiser’s not android users.
You might think that this is different with apple - it is not.
GrapheneOS
Hopefully the team figures out a way to disable this
Settings > Google > All Settings > Find My Device > Off
The team has done it! Hurrah!.
So you’re implying that if the phone doesn’t have a google account signed in, it won’t even have the find my device when powered off? Sounds good.
I’m driven by convenience, FOMO, and peer pressure, so go ahead and destroy my privacy and security, Google!
Snark aside, it seems like a really neat useful little idea that will 100% be used for some creepy corporate shit.
We can already tell you the age, gender, hobbies, kinks, frequently visited spots and how long they stay there, who goes with them and who they meet, what they think about, when they go to sleep, but wouldn’t you also like to know where they are and who they’re near when their devices are offline with Bluetooth on? We can do that now too! Creepy? No! They think it’s so they can [checks notes] find their device even if its offline.
-Google probably
A few days ago my wife’s phone said there was an unknown airtag with her. It turned out to be an airtag in a kids friend backpack but for once it seemed like Google was looking out for the best interest of someone. It could have easily been a stalker trying to find where we lived.
It’s still not worth the privacy risks imo. The feature should at least be opt-in
And it would only be about as useful as tile. Nobody opts in but everybody wants the service
As useful as tile is ideal to me. Don’t allow for the global tracking but let’s me make my keys or wallet make a noise when I misplaced them.
What I meant in opt-in is like make a switch somewhere in the first setup menu or make a pop-up telling about how useful it is and asking to enable it. And the problem is that this feature is not just opt-in but not even opt-out! You can’t disable it and therefore it’s straight up evil.
There’s a FOSS app for anyone who wants this functionality without Google
I can only imagine how often teacher’s phone light up for these.
For AirTags, those notifications should only start if:
- The AirTag has not been with his owner for more than 4 hours
- The AirTag is moving
- The AirTag persistently stays close to another device that isn’t associated with the AirTag owners Apple ID
For Teachers this shouldn’t be an issue unless their students have tecb challenged parent. AirTags arent meant for tracking kids. If it’s their AirTag, they are with them and the alarm won’t trigger. If they have a shared AirTag (possible since iOS 17) they are with theyr own AirTag and the alarm won’t trigger. If they got one that is ONLY registered to their parents, then it will trigger the Anti Stalking feature and those parents should be educated on their problematic use of an AirTag.
Those kids should have an Apple Watch, all the tracking options for parents, none of the hassle of stalking alerts. Or they now just use a shared AirTag which they would then also need to have an Apple ID enabled device with them. So the watch is usually the more afordable and versatile option.
You think parents should get their kindergartens an Apple Watch?
Perhaps you think I’m referring to children past elementary school.
Regardless of what Apple says AirTags are and are not for people will use them however they see fit. For example, they are not for tracking pets but there are pet collars designed to hold an AirTag so clearly many people are ignoring Apple.
Attaching an AirTag to a child’s backpack seems like an obvious way to track one’s child, even if it’s not supported use case.
The purpose isn’t track things you know how to find but to find things that get lost; like children. There is also enough paranoia about kidnapping that I’m sure there are at least a few children in every classroom that are tagged.
This is probably an unpopular opinion especially on this sub and something that will probably never happen realistically with the way the world is going but it is an extremely cool feature. If this was not done by companys that already harvest data etc and was as private as something like this can be such as your device communication to another device has a uuid that does not tie back to “you” if that makes sense or something not sure. Because there are some use cases that could be extremely good such as the one comment here about stalkers etc.
I agree with this and I’m glad we have graphene OS at the same time for the moments when I no longer want this to be the default option.
I hope to see more reasonable takes like this - weighted with reality, not just reinforcing what people want to hear.
This is how Tile works as well. Not sure what their data harvesting policies are.
100% same as apple for their similar service and tag device
If you cared about privacy you wouldn’t be using any Google products.
Quite true. As a Google Fi subscriber since 2015, I still rely on them for that service, but I’ve weaned off everything else to the extent that I can. There was a time that I thought the value outweighed the spying, but its impossible for me to maintain that delusion now.
We’re on the same boat with Fi. I only use it because it’s the only service I know about that I can pause and not have to pay when I’m not in the US. I don’t live in the US, but I but do have to travel there very frequently, so it’s an acceptable trade-off for me. And it works perfectly fine on GrapheneOS even With GMS off.
I’ve been out of the US since late '22 and they still haven’t cut my data or sent one email about it. I expected to lose it after 90 days. I get a google play services error once in a while about Fi needing it to have all permissions, but I don’t have any problems leaving them off. My next install of lineage I’m going to try no GApps and see if it still works. I know the LOS team say you need it for Fi.
Yeah. I also use it when I travel to Canada, Ecuador, Colombia and México, and it just works. I’m telling you, it’s been a life saver because the roaming fees from my country’s providers are ridiculously high.
I’ve been expecting Google to kill it like they tend to do with everything people start to like, but it’s been over 7 years already, and still going.
I have no idea what the impact would be with LOS, but with GrapheneOS, I don’t even get error messages. Granted, I did use play services while setting up the Fi app, then un-installed it all and update from Aurora. Flawless.
I’ve been expecting Google to kill it like they tend to do with everything people start to like, but it’s been over 7 years already, and still going.
Don’t jinx it!!! 😉
Aurora
I’ll be checking this out tonight; thanks for the tip!
Enjoy.
It’s pretty much the same thing that ‘tile’ does, it’s scary that they do this as an opt-out though. Having that as a system level function effectively means they can enable or disable it at will without having to have a separate app.
One more bug to sort out with notifications and I’m full time onto GraphineOS.
I was able to opt out of this by going into settings.
The email has a link to opt out too.
Here it is for anyone else interested: opt out of the network
Good! Android people ought to have the same tag tracking quality as iOS ppl.
Pray tell whatre you gonna find your device with if you only have one device?
Everybody else’s devices.
Yeah im not gonna swipe someone elses device to find mine with
If you’re unfamiliar with the change being implemented, Google is using every android device to detect every other device and report that location to a central database. You can then go to the Find My Device app or website and your device can be located if it’s been seen by any other device.
There’s no need for the user to access anybody else’s device.
My concern is that my privacy is now being invaded by all the scanning devices in my area, and everybody’s movements are even more transparent for the data brokers.
Sure wish it didn’t use Bluetooth. That’s kind of the extent of my thoughts on it.
Bingo!
To bad I don’t use Google
What is a Google?
Jail.
