• jetA
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    2 days ago

    Welcome to the wonderful world of Bluetooth Mac address tracking, often used in stores to track the location of customers throughout the store. So yes absolutely Bluetooth tracking is a real thing, turning off your Bluetooth radio prevents your Bluetooth radio from being tracked.

    https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~nibhaska/papers/sp22_paper.pdf

    Bluetooth beacons, which I believe most people are thinking of when they talk about air tags, or Bluetooth tiles, are a different thing entirely.

    Bluetooth threats:

    • a phones radio being tracked
    • a Bluetooth beacon planted on someone
    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      2 days ago

      So its a dilemma.

      Either turn on bluetooth so you can detect trackers, but you then expose your bluetooth MAC address allowing others to track you.

      Or turn off bluetooth, but you’ll never know if there’s a secret track on you.

      Wonder if there’s a way to passively scan for trackers without emitting bluetooth signals.

      (Does Graphene OS allow MAC address randomization for bluetooth?)

      • jetA
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        2 days ago

        Does Graphene OS allow MAC address randomization for bluetooth

        Actually, I believe AOSP allows for a MAC address randomization when not connected to a device, but as the UCSD paper above indicates, it’s still quite fingerprintable