Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

404media.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 50 posts

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#11

Post by mikeocool »

madaxe_again wrote: post #5
mikeocool wrote: post #3

Isn't it not really possible to uniquely identify most modern bluetooth devices this way? Specifically to prevent things like this. Unless they're hoping my AirPods are in pairing mode all of the time and they're going to track the name "mikeocool's AirPods."

They just need to link a cluster to you in the first place - say at a toll booth or drive-thru - where ANPR is already commonly deployed.

I wonder how much that actually helps. A license plate scanner and a camera can easily identify me in my car. What tracking advantage does “there are three (probably) Apple devices” in the car as well confer.

If I’m away from my car later, I’m just a guy walking around with 3 Apple devices (or two if I forget my phone in the car).

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#12

Post by mschuster91 »

mikeocool wrote: post #11
madaxe_again wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just need to link a cluster to you in the first place - say at a toll booth or drive-thru - where ANPR is already commonly deployed.

I wonder how much that actually helps. A license plate scanner and a camera can easily identify me in my car. What tracking advantage does “there are three (probably) Apple devices” in the car as well confer. If I’m away from my car later, I’m just a guy walking around with 3 Apple devices (or two if I forget my phone in the car).

> A license plate scanner and a camera can easily identify me in my car.

Sure, but now you can track someone from their car through public transport, shops and god knows wherever else someone placed a sniffer.

And no, randomization doesn't help, because in the end the Find My beacons have to resolve down to some common identifier otherwise the "an unknown device has been following you for 2 hours" warning would not work.

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#13

Post by GlitchRider47 »

icameron wrote: post #10

I was in the space 10 years ago with a product. Primarily Bluetooth, later BLE and WiFi. At that time most consumer devices were constantly discoverable. About 3-5% of traffic would have a disoverable MAC. These days not so many. iPhones never are discoverable unless you are in pairing mode. BLE broadcasts beacons much more consistently and generates a lot of data to filter, but they also change MACs. Most WiFi chips…

Using AirGuard on Android, I'm able to detect iPhones around me even when they are not in pairing mode.

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#14

Post by crumpled »

According to the graphic, all RFID/NFC tags including pet microchips and your company badge will be associated with you too.

I can remember in the late 1990's Berkeley Public Library was considering adding RFID tags to the books as asset tags. The public push-back was significant and surprising at the time. Freedom-loving library patrons were concerned about nefarious tracking. Proponents of the new tags thought that the concept of tracking people or the books they read was rooted in paranoia.

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#16

Post by gruez »

GlitchRider47 wrote: post #13
icameron wrote: post #10

I was in the space 10 years ago with a product. Primarily Bluetooth, later BLE and WiFi. At that time most consumer devices were constantly discoverable. About 3-5% of traffic would have a disoverable MAC. These days not so many. iPhones never are discoverable unless you are in pairing mode. BLE broadcasts beacons much more consistently and generates a lot of data to filter, but they also change MACs. Most WiFi chips…

Using AirGuard on Android, I'm able to detect iPhones around me even when they are not in pairing mode.

>I'm able to detect iPhones around me even when they are not in pairing mode.

Right, but the mac is randomized every 15 min, which makes tracking hard to pull off.

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#17

Post by ryukoposting »

icameron wrote: post #10

I was in the space 10 years ago with a product. Primarily Bluetooth, later BLE and WiFi. At that time most consumer devices were constantly discoverable. About 3-5% of traffic would have a disoverable MAC. These days not so many. iPhones never are discoverable unless you are in pairing mode. BLE broadcasts beacons much more consistently and generates a lot of data to filter, but they also change MACs. Most WiFi chips…

> BLE broadcasts beacons much more consistently and generates a lot of data to filter, but they also change MACs.

Hah! I wish this were true. The overwhelming majority of BLE widgets don't use resolvable random private addresses. They could, they just don't. A huge share of the industry is just copy-pasting Nordic sample code until they have a shippable product, and last I checked, exactly one (1) Nordic sample project enables RRPAs. Nordic treats it as an edge case, and everyone else follows along.

And that's besides the issue that the RRPA rotation algorithm is pretty contrived. I'd be shocked if some three-letter hasn't already built a tool for tracking devices that use it.

Re: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs

#18

Post by analogpixel »

Program your flipper0 to record all wireless identifications for a few weeks. hook broadcaster to amplifier and attach to your car playing all the time. Every time you drive by one of these, it'll look like a parade just went by.

Probably do the same thing when you go into retail stores. just flood the place with every possible identification.

Maybe an easier solution is just write something that spoofs hundreds of fake ids and sends them out constantly where ever you go; bonus points if you can create IDs that can break the devices when they try to parse it.

Post reply on HN