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Tile's security is so bad it's a feature for stalkers

79 pointsby sambelllltoday at 6:18 PM21 commentsview on HN

Comments

ollientoday at 8:42 PM

It's interesting to me that other trackers have end-to-end encryption. I wouldn't have expected it but makes sense for the threat model.

> Providerslike Apple and Google achieve location indistinguishability by end-to-end encrypting location information using a public key embedded in BLE advertisements emitted by a tag

Though it makes me wonder... What's the private key? If the public key is attached to the tag, how is the device getting it?

alt227today at 7:56 PM

I dont get why this is really an issue when there are devices on Temu you can easily buy that are actually designed for stalking. Why would anybody with a genuine nefarious purpose spend their time hacking a tile when they can just buy a generic Chinese gps transponder?

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mspectertoday at 8:35 PM

Last author on the paper here (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.00350). Happy to answer any questions!

user00005today at 8:32 PM

It isn't that difficult to just not lose things.

People love to over complicate their lives with technology, giving up money and privacy in the process.

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kefabeantoday at 6:56 PM

Does anyone know whether https://mygrid.app/ is trustworthy? Development had been glacial, but looking at their website it seems they finally support degoogled android which is a huge step forwards.

dreamcompilertoday at 6:39 PM

This explains why I'm seeing commercials for Life360 now for the first time ever: They've developed a new revenue stream by selling everybody's location to advertisers.

Now deleted from my family's phones.

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mawadevtoday at 7:55 PM

What the hell is Tile?

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kotaKattoday at 7:41 PM

"But, but, the Tile TOS says they'll fine a stalker a million dollars!"

Life360 is such a skeevy bullshit company.

kerrieshitztoday at 8:29 PM

[dead]

octoberfranklintoday at 6:58 PM

BBP;DR (Broken Bot Protection; Didn't Read)

Loops forever at

blog.adafruit.com Performing security verification This website uses a security service to protect against malicious bots. This page is displayed while the website verifies you are not a bot.

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