Unknown tracker alert on Android
I just received an Unknown Tracker alert on my Pixel 7 running Android 14 beta 5 for an Apple air tag that was on my son in laws key chain as I had borrowed his car.
I heard this was coming but didn't expect it so soon!
Quite impressed with both the information given and the general advice and steps to take offered.
The first notification was "Tracker Travelling With You: Unknown Apple air tag detected. The owner can see your location."
Touching "more info" then shows a map of where the tracker has been with me and the option to make the tracker play a sound to help locate it, with a note that the owner won't know you've done that.
Then more advice and options:
- If you feel unsafe, get help.
- Get and save tracker info
- Disable the tracker (with a how-to guide on battery removal)
And a ”need more help" link.
As I said, I had heard about this coming but was pleasantly surprised at how good it was and the general advice and help offered up.
Nice seeing things like this done right.
It is nice, but I suspect that the people who really want to track someone probably won't use AirTags? This seems more about not making it too easy to do it casually.
There is a weird paranoia about using AirTags as trackers for people. But they're already terrible for this purpose. They beep periodically. In the meanwhile Tile trackers have been around a lot longer and do not beep. There were others before them, as well. You could have also used a burner phone.
Burner phones and other devices with dedicated cellular connections would be more bulky and power-hungry. Tile has been around, but it never had as robust of a network as AirTags with their access to all iOS devices out in the world reporting in on them (though, I understand Google is taking steps toward bringing this to Tile and other manufacturers as an Android standard?). Without the anti-stalking countermeasures, AirTags would've been too good.