Last year, Apple and Google announced a partnership to develop an industry specification in order to combat stalking activities that use Bluetooth trackers (like the AirTag, for example). Now, the two tech giants have officially announced said standard called Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers.
The feature is rolling out to iOS 17.5, which was just released today, and all Android devices running on Android 6.0 and up. It allows devices on either platform to alert with a prompt that says “[Item] Found Moving With You” when it detects a Bluetooth tracking device has been moving along with you over time.
When you get such an alert on either an iPhone or an Android device, you can view the trackers identifier, have it play a sound, and disable it. This only works with AirTags but third-party manufacturers such as Chipolo, eufy, Jio, Motorola, and Pebblebee have committed that future tags will be compatible.
Apple actually released an Android app way back in 2021 in order to mitigate the stalking issue, but it seems that both companies decided that a built-in system was needed. In related news, the Find My Device feature on Android was recently revamped to implement a network using other devices on the same platform for tracking, similar to iOS’ Find My network.
