BETTER LIVING THROUGH SMARTER TECHNOLOGY
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Look after your devices — and everything else
BY ALEX COXracking doesn’t, it’s fair to say,
have the Ľnest reputation. Few of
us actively seek it out, but none of us
can avoid it.
The web’s biggest entities keep tabs on you
everywhere you go online — something which has
been one of the most powerful drivers in the rise
of VPNs. Automated facial recognition threatens
to follow us around on the streets (do we wear
full–face masks next?) and tomorrow’s connected
cars will, for all their new smarts, no doubt report
back on our activities on the road. Even your phonecollects a whole host of data; if they need to, the
authorities can determine your precise location by
triangulating the signal strength of the cell masts
your handset is connected to. You’re being tracked,
whether you agree to it or not, and while the data
that’s being collected often is more on a device
level and rarely directly connected to your identity,
it’s not a comfortable thing.
But there’s a less sinister aspect of tracking, one
where you’re in control. Something that might
actually help you sleep better at night. Tracking
your devices — and, indeed, all of your personal
property — is something you should be doing. It
can protect you against theft, doubly so if you lock
down your devices using secure methods, and (most
importantly) it’ll act as some small defence against
you losing that expensive device.
Apple has been the leader in device tracking for
some time — Find My iPhone set the standard
starting back in 2010, using cellular tracking to
(mostly) pinpoint the location of a lost device. It did
ask you to jump through a number of hoops though
— your device needed power, the battery-draining
Location Services function switched on, and phone
service — and it only worked if the stray device
doing the tracking was connected to the same
iCloud account as the trackee.T
70 MAR 2020 maclife.com Image rights from left to right: Chipolo, Tile
Want to keep tabs on your luggage while travelling? Try throwing
in a tracking device that has a good Bluetooth range.