Bluetooth tracker in a postcard and mailed to a warship exposed its location

tomshardware.com

18 points·tcp_handshaker··7 comments

It would have to be something like an AirTag or Tile, otherwise it would be pointless?

The only reason these are useful is because of the vast amount of phones that will report the location of the bluetooth tracker. A $10 chinese version wouldn’t work so well.

The $10 Chinese ones can pretend to be an AirTag or Tile:

https://hackaday.com/2022/02/22/no-privacy-cloning-the-airta...

https://hackaday.com/2025/03/03/hijacking-airtag-infrastruct...

Since it was Dutch news and Dutch ship - I'm betting they used ~€5 Bluetooth tracker available in Action stores.

Not sure how different it works from Apple/Samsung trackers. But my Motorola Android phone can set it up, and phones out and about are reporting where it is.

Thank you, both! I had no idea other options were available.

> A $10 chinese version wouldn’t work so well

You can get $7 MFi licensed versions these days from the dollar store https://kalleboo.com/linked/daiso-airtag.jpg

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apples-find-my-networ...

It’s pretty hard to hide warships these days. Imagery satellites with resolution good enough to track a ship capture every location on earth several times a day.

These days Bluetooth chips can be tracked using satellites using Hubble Network satellites (www.hubble.com)

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