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I know the data considerations for this are going to be small, but they're going to be non-zero, which makes it interesting to see how Apple is going to solve that.
Apple devices can't report every tag it sees all the time as a walk through a busy area could result in hundreds of tags each one of which could chip away at mobile data allowances.
If they only need to report tag IDs that have been marked as stolen/lost then they'll need to download these lists (or updates to them) periodically.
I guess it'll work in a similar way to the Covid location app. The device will keep track of any tags it sees (along with a timestamp and geo-location) and then cross check what it has seen against the list of lost/stolen tags, and report anything it has seen of interest, and discarding anything that wasn't. The downloads of the lost/stolen tags of interest will either be small enough to be done over mobile data (especially if divvied up regionally) and/or augmented by larger downloads when the phone has a wifi connection.
So the chance of a "Find my tag" screen showing a bike being ridden away along a street in real-time as it passes lots of people with Apple devices is unlikely to be a thing.
Greenbank-
Would it use Apple devices that aren't officially signed up to 'tags' too? It's an interesting and maybe worrying concept!
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walk through a busy area could result in hundreds of tags each one of which could chip away at mobile data allowances.
Will just wait until it gets wifi then send location and time detected. Suspect this won’t be the default setting though as it hobbles the system too much. More likely is that it reports over xG ‘hi I found this thing at this location at this time - are you interested?’ And the server says ‘nah mate, and don’t report it again for x time’.
Not sure it would need to have access to the stolen / lost list, which could get quite large, unless they divvy it up by some kind of zoning system.
The covid app is hobbled by not being an apple product and being delivered by an app; this stuff is going to be nearer OS level.
That said pretty much all apps will slowly chip away at data in the background for legit and non legit reasons and literally nobody cares.
Squaredisk
Howard
No, it can piggyback on any Apple device that's in Bluetooth range to get its location to you. I don't think there's such a thing as public tracking.