Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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Privacy-oriented Tile Alternative (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Looking for an alternative to tiles.

I realize lowjacking your stuff is kind of against the idea of privacy in the first place, but the convenience of being able to find lost items is big.

Are there any other locators that can use cellular service or just use BLE?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago

The advantage of Tile and AirTags is that they're relatively dumb devices that leverage passing cell phones to snitch on their location. This means they can last months on a single charge while the phones do the heavy lifting.

There may be more and less private ways to do what they do, but they'll all have similar tradeoffs.

A device that tracks its own location and reports it out over a cell network would basically require all the complexity and size of a smart phone minus the screen and cost similarly

There are Bluetooth trackers that can be run privately and with enough creativity can be used to identify the location of something within the confines of your home (or know if something is not home), but won't be much help if you're trying to track down lost luggage or want to know if you left your wallet at work or the coffee shop. (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fmBwINdsxQ)