Bluetooth tracker hidden in postcard and mailed to warship exposed its location | Hacker News Reader

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

tomshardware.com

41 pointsthunderbong11 comments

If this thing is like an Apple AirTag or Milwaukee One-Key - there's another leak somewhere on that ship! Bluetooth isn't strong enough to reach anywhere from sea, and they don't have GPS or satellite communications built in.

Which means they're allowing iPhones and/or Android devices that are doing the communications for the bluetooth dongle - and have access to GPS.

Seems a much bigger issue than adding some additional mail sorting equipment.

From TFA: it was in port at the time.

Can't ships in port be identified by ... looking at them?

It happened for a day and seems to include underway.

> Can't ships in port be identified by ... looking at them?

Yeah, when you know where they are. You see the point? Pun fully intended.

Original source: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/17/dutch_navy_frigate_tr...

I wonder what model they used. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those trackers that could be hidden in a postcard

There are ultra thin credit card size BT / GPS trackers designed for wallets. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=credit+card+size+gps+tracker&ia=we...

Cool!

Look at nordic chips. They were super smol even when I was using em almost a decade ago. Wsclp are crazy smol.

"Postcard" might be a bit of a misnomer too, because it's mentioned that overall "envelopes" weren't being screened, just packages.

Just slip an AirTag in the greeting card and it made it onto the ship, someone opened it, went "WTF" and tossed the AirTag immediately.

Guess they'll x-ray all their inbound envelopes now, too. I'm also given memories of Entertainment Weekly when they shipped a fully functional Android phone (with T-Mobile data!) stripped down between the pages of a magazine ad for the CW Network... all just to display a feed of Tweets. https://mashable.com/archive/ew-has-smartphone-inside#92887I...

Or that time Microsoft included a free hotspot in some magazines.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-embeds-wi-fi-routers-in...

Time to irradiate all mails

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