I’m looking to put a tracker on my mountain bike. I use GrapheneOS.

What are your recommendations?

I’ve heard Life360 (which owns Tile now) is a privacy nightmare.

AirTags are unmanageable without an iPhone.

Never heard of Chipolo until recently.

Is there anything for GrapheneOS that would work well?

(Also: Does GrapheneOS have a Find My software equivalent?)

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    I can’t imagine how such a system would work and also be privacy friendly.

    The tags are picked up by other people’s phones and reported to a central service. The nature of the reported information unavoidably gives private data like your location to the owner of the service. You could technically build your own network, but you’d have limited users so it wouldn’t have the reach of the AirTag network.

    Find my Phone software could work in a self-hosted/privacy friendly environment. You’d just need an app that reports its location to a server that you’re running. Something like this: https://github.com/LINKIWI/orion-server which seems to use MQTT to periodically report the phone’s position information to your own server.

    • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      The nature of the reported information unavoidably gives private data like your location to the owner of the service.

      I mean that’s not totally unavoidable, it could simply be encrypted communication sent directly to your device.

      • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 days ago

        Yeah, I could imagine a system that could be created that would allow the same functionality but also be anonymous.

        If there’s such a FOSS project going, I don’t know of it (but would be interested!).

        • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          4 days ago

          Things like Google and Apple location services only work because they’re absolutely fucking everywhere. And it’s why a FOSS implementation would likely never work. Regardless of encryption or decentralization.

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
            0·
            4 days ago

            It would require a large user buy-in, for sure.

            But, in the meantime, it seems like we could get a few nerds together to hack out how to put a system together that preserves privacy while allowing distributed location tracking.

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
                0·
                4 days ago

                Apple calls two different things ‘Find My Phone’, the phone’s location tracking of itself and then there’s the entire network of Apple devices across the world that constantly monitor for the AirTag’s Bluetooth Low Energy beacons allowing you to find the AirTags (and any attached valuables) anywhere in the world.

                There are many things that let you ask your phone where it is (or have it report it’s location to a server that you host).

                There is nothing that matches the worldwide network of Apple devices which are listening for your airtag’s BLE beacon.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 days ago

        The small hardware trackers have a range of 10 meters. They literally cannot work without being a privacy intrusion like Tile/Life touch.

        The only option is a tiny phone that you hide on the bike. You can go really small by getting a dog gps tracker. They work using cell service rather than depend on other nearby users running a tracking app that reports their finds back to Apple or Lifetouch so that you can login and see it.