Apple's "Find My" Network Officially Open to Third-Party Devices
What, wait what?
While this is all good and fine. Wouldn't using someone else's phone without their permission be wrong? It will use data from the iPhone that located the missing device and the iPhone will connect to the missing item via bluetooth without that iPhone owners permission. Doesn't that go against one of apples main ethos? Privacy??
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The amount of data involved is absolutely tiny. It won't affect anyone's data allotment.
The data is all encrypted and anonymized to ensure there are no privacy issues.
The phone doesn't "connect" to the missing device over Bluetooth, it just "sees" that it's nearby. All Bluetooth devices broadcast their ID constantly while on; that's the only way phones can find them and connect to them. And phones regularly scan for nearby devices and "see" their unique IDs. That's the basis for how Bluetooth works. As long as you have Bluetooth turned on, your phone already knows the unique IDs of all Bluetooth devices nearby.
Apple's system simply takes advantage of that scanning that your phone is already doing as part of any basic implement...
(continues)
The data is all encrypted and anonymized to ensure there are no privacy issues.
The phone doesn't "connect" to the missing device over Bluetooth, it just "sees" that it's nearby. All Bluetooth devices broadcast their ID constantly while on; that's the only way phones can find them and connect to them. And phones regularly scan for nearby devices and "see" their unique IDs. That's the basis for how Bluetooth works. As long as you have Bluetooth turned on, your phone already knows the unique IDs of all Bluetooth devices nearby.
Apple's system simply takes advantage of that scanning that your phone is already doing as part of any basic implement...
(continues)
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This forum is closed.
