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

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bluetooth could probably use public key crypto, like the new passkey authentication websites are moving toward. Basically, you'd pair once (which gets you the public key), and then the broadcast "id" would change every time it turns on based on that internal private key.

And yeah, I'm not a fan of devices broadcasting their type. That could make me a target for theft if someone scans for what devices I have. I haven't read through the spec, but hopefully that info is only broadcast when pairing (and I'm fine with that since it's opt-in).

One big one is that if you can pair to the device, you can get its secret, and from then on, you can uniquely identify to it

Not necessarily, they don't need to be able to generate ids, just verify them.

Even if it's required for some reason, it could generate a new keypair every time you pair it, and Bluetooth devices could store some number of keys (say 3) for paired devices.

It permits obtaining a location fix rapidly, and permits doing so when GPS reception isn't functioning, like indoors.

How often do you need that though? The only times I feel like I really need location are:

using a mapping service - need accuracy within a few meters - GPS is fine
looking for a lost item - I probably know where it is within a few meters (in my house, car, or workplace) - could use RFID and triangulate
looking for someone - a few meters or an address is fine - I can just call them, or they can go outside for better GPS signal
stolen item - I'm not going to go pick it up, and I doubt the police would either; insurance is a better option here

So I really don't see a reason why I'd need hyper-accurate location info.

I generally disable location access in apps I use, I keep Bluetooth off unless I'm actively using a Bluetooth device, and I never get those tracking tags because I don't want to be tracked. I haven't had a problem where I wished I did things differently, so I'm honestly unsure what actual problem it's solving, and the potential for abuse is way too high (e.g. more private data slurped up for advertising, like ads for a shop you recently visited).

[+] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

can be tens of seconds

Sure, if it's off. But most phones already have a fix most of the time, so unless you're coming out of a tunnel or something, it really shouldn't be noticeable. At least, I haven't noticed it.

And you can still get a pretty good fix from a cell tower. I'd rather that connection be more private, but at least it's between me and the service provider (and the cops I guess) and not some random person on the street. An attack on that would be far more sophisticated than a Bluetooth attack.

cities with tall buildings

Ah, I'm rarely downtown, so that's probably why I haven't run into it. But wouldn't 5G triangulation largely solve this?

As for indoors, what exactly do you need the fix for? Surely you know where you are, so you can enter that into your maps provider if the fix isn't accurate. Seems like a big trade-off for a small inconvenience.

And for airports, I just look at the map. They're usually at every junction, so it only takes a few seconds to find where I need to go. Those maps are in the backs of airplane seats, so I just look it over while waiting to get off.

augmented reality

This seems pretty legitimate, but surely we can solve it with local AI (e.g. Google Pixel 8) instead of calling home. If I walk into a store and want a price for something, it should recognize the store I'm in and be able to recognize the product or whatever.

I'd like my navigation software to quickly know that I took the wrong offramp or the like.

Doesn't it already? I get that even without Bluetooth enabled, so it's only working off GPS and cell towers. And this is with a super crappy phone (2020 base Moto phone). I've never had a problem with a bad fix for driving directions.

it's hard to even get a smartphone any more with a 1/8" TRS audio interface

Yeah, that annoys me to no end. I don't care about losing the SD card slot, but I really like wearing corded headphones around the house since they sound so much better.

I'm not some tech Luddite or anything, and I have my fair share of Bluetooth stuff (shokz headphones, keyboard, mouse, phone, 2 laptops, desktop, etc). I just don't want my Bluetooth stuff tracked by anyone, especially not Google or Apple. In fact, the only reason I have an Android phone is because there's no viable third option, and Android helps me feel more in-control (I have a firewall and have disabled most of the default apps). I'm getting a Pixel next to (ironically) get rid of most Google crap with a custom ROM (they're really compatible with ROMs).

All I want is my things to securely connect with my other things when in range, and that's it.

[+] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

cell phones have no information about the direction of cell towers that they can talk to

That's true of any radio, including Bluetooth, which is why triangulation is needed. It looks like 10 meters accurate should be feasible with 5G alone, which should be plenty for navigation purposes. Add GPS, and the article claims 1/10 meter precision. Maybe that's a little worse in a city with large buildings, but it'll probably be pretty close.

a number of websites now request one's location to do things like provide nearby stores

Yeah, I just type in a nearby zip code or city, and it works fine.

use the camera to identify the location?

It could know what store you're in, but not which particular branch of that store. As in, it would know you're in a Bath and Body Works or whatever, but not the downtown mall outlet. That should cover most use cases, and the others could request temporary location access or present a list of possibilities. That way users know when they're potentially being tracked.

I don't know why it would ever need to know your precise location, it should be able to be very helpful by just parsing the environment and data (e.g. email) you've granted it access to.

Are users gonna be expected to walk around with the camera recording and seed this thing?

Nah, just download it and cache it, and update it when home. Storage is cheap, I can get 1TB of NVMe storage in a tiny (M.2 2230) form factor for <$100. All OSM data is 100GB, so I highly doubt local storage would be an issue. The only limitations here are artificial (e.g. huge markups for phone storage now that SD storage is dead).

So from my perspective, we can solve the limitations here fairly easily, it's just Apple and Google trying to lock in customers. Maybe I'm missing something though, but avoiding most of that has gotten me pretty far.