Open Source FindMyDevice Solution - selfhostable!
Nulide / FindMyDevice · GitLab
Find your Device with an SMS or online with the help of FMDServer. This applications goal is to track your device when it's lost and should be a...
I'll have a look at it. In the meanwhile, I've been using Tasker for that: if an SMS from curtains numbers is received with the text "POSITION", it will reply back with an OpenStreetMap link of the smartphone position.
I wouldn't use it, but always appreciate Open Source solutions that can be self hosted if you want.
If you really care about your privacy, think about to not use stock Android. Instead consider an alternative that is based on Android, but stipping out all the Google and tracking from the operating system, such as "/e/" operating system (bad name): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki//e/_(operating_system) and https://e.foundation/e-os/
/e/ is not very degoogled. DivestOS or GrapheneOS would be better choices, then maybe CalyxOS.
Why is /e/ not very degoogled? It is through and through.
/e/ does quite a good job removing Google's presence from Android. It's been awhile since I watched it, but this techlore video does a good breakdown of it.
Edit: actually that's not the one I was thinking of, I'll keep trying to find it, but it broke down the actually network connections that different degoogled ROMs were making and /e/ did very well.
Edit 2: couldn't find the video, it's lost somewhere in my watch history from 2+ years ago. In any case, even jumping to lineage from stock android is a great move, and /e/ makes many improvements on Lineage in removing further dependence on google code. Better to use a phone you already have than to purchase a new device just to run software that has security features you likely don't need. It makes me think of buying a car for it's top speed of 160 mph when you're only ever going to be driving the speed limit.
Could you explain why you wouldn't use it?
I've been using it for a couple of years and am happy with it, it grants an extra layer of security I think, if you can wipe the device when lost/stolen. Also very handy if you misplaced the phone and its set to not ring, as with this it will ring at full volume. You don't need to use their server for the app to function, if that is your concern. I use a secondary device from my household. You can send a text message to your phone to let it ring even when its set to silent mode/get its location/or even wipe it remotely.
Could you explain why you wouldn’t use it?
Nothing against the project or the concept, I personally don't have a need for. I'm just the kind of person who is organized when it comes to stuff like that (no offense to anyone, I really try to be careful with the wording here!). And if I don't see a need for a software or service, then there is no need to add complexity to the system. I'm still curious enough about these tools to look into. That's all.
Not OP, but the tools provided by my OEM of choice are already really good, so it's something I'm glad exists but isn't useful to me.
Took a bit to figure out what it was even claiming to do
When enabled your phone constantly sends e2e encrypted your location to the server where you can than access it from a webbrowser.
God no. Just take a hatchet to my battery and be done with it.
Also: Until a month or two ago, sure. But google finally got their shit together-ish and set up a tracking network the same as apple and samsung. And that is what you are sacrificing your privacy for. Yes, you give Big Tech tracking information... that they already have. In exchange you can actually have peace of mind of knowing your luggage is in the same airport or even where you parked. And you can't really self-host a crowd-sourced network.
As someone on graphene OS without google play services, this sounds amazing
I guess. But it is really going to depend on where you live and just how frequently it does dial home.
My personal use for these networks is luggage tags. But a friend lost her phone on a hike a few years back and the find my phone stuff was more or less useless due to poor reception and ever dwindling battery.
The real benefit is the low energy bluetooth magic and OTHER devices to do the phoning home. Because maybe I have shit reception but someone hiking a hundred feet away has good reception and updates the ping.
God no. Just take a hatchet to my battery and be done with it.
You'd be surprised what little impact on battery it actually has. I find this type of swift casting aside of something you've not even tried to be rather disingenuous.
Also, if your device has a cellular modem with an active connection, your provider is already tracking your location constantly and selling your personal information to the highest bidder anyways (including law enforcement and governments), so IMO it's a bit pointless to worry so much about that.
if you don't use the server it has practically no load on your battery. it sleeps until you trigger it to send information.
A simple task such as sending a request with GPS information constantly won't do shit. You'd be surprised how much android sends in the background.
They can have data about your past but if you care about privacy, you can limit data collection a lot and outdated data is useless in many cases. Sacrificing privacy is a questionable choice and won't give a conscious person peace of mind at all lol but everyone makes their own decisions.
If people truly change their lives and focus on it, you can do a lot. But it does not take much, at all, to become compromised to one degree or another and people vastly underestimate the amount of redundancy. Or even the impact of a sibling or partner or even friend.
Instead, the common case is people will tweak one small aspect and think that does anything other than inconvenience them. Or, worse, they'll watch a youtube and decide to put EVERYTHING through their vpn which... defeats the purpose because they are still one easily collated set of profiles/cookies that can trivially reveal that "Fred Smith in Afghanistan" is really "Fred Smith in North Carolina"
Which is why my approach is that there is data I very much want to protect and data I know I can't. So I focus on understanding the former while doing what I can with the latter.
And something like this? There are probably specific niche use cases for this. But it is a product/service that fundamentally requires aggregated data. And, depending on the implementation, it is going to fuck with your battery hard.
If you have an active cellular connection, you cannot really limit data collection, including the tracking and selling of your location data.
I've been sending my position to my server (with Traccar and GPSlogger) for years and I haven't had any problems with the battery. It sends out the position every 5 seconds (excessive, I know!!! 🙈) and every 69 seconds when the battery is below 25% and only when it's not connected to a WiFi network.
But I'm with you about the new Google tracking system. I haven't had the chance to check: does it work like Apple and can track devices that have been turned off?
How does googles network work I assumed every phone know its own location and can relay location of nearby devices combined with multiple devices and some triangulation and maybe WiFi ssid tracking u can locate almost anything. Now that raises the major concern mainly google will know the location of every single device I'm sure its doing Bluetooth scanning so I doubt even I on graphene will be getting tracked. Surly there is a better decentralised anonymous solution here.
Not sure if google is particularly different but the way this works for the other services is basically low energy bluetooth scanning coupled with the phones providing their location*. So basically all the devices on that scanning/spy network periodically ping/listen for nearby devices/trackers. When it finds one, it sends a quick message to the servers with that phone's location and the ID of the tracker. Get enough of those pings and you can triangulate the position of the tracker pretty precisely.
Which... is why this fundamentally does not work with "hacker" solutions that allegedly emphasize privacy. Because you just don't have enough devices listening. This was painfully obvious with tile back in the day and is still an issue with Samsung in some countries.
: Via a combination of gps, cell tower, and wifi network scanning. The less obvious part of that being wifi networks which is the majority of how interior positioning works.
do you have your Bluetooth enabled at all times?
This is fantastic. I've been using it for a while and it's battery efficient and easy to use.
The Dev is responsive and I've donated. Should probably do that again soon.