Your opinion of trackable wallets?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I just (last night) experienced my semi-annual Klong of discovering no wallet in my pocket as the check for my dinner (in a nice restaurant) arrived. Happily, my dinner companion was eager to pay the whole thing, and more happily, I discovered after an anxious drive home to my apartment that my wallet was, in fact, in my car all along (my dinner companion had been sitting on it). A very unpleasant half-hour between finding it missing and then finding it. My entire life in an uproar, and worst of all, I go through this on a regular schedule.

And even worse, I took steps to prevent it last year, steps that I’d forgotten entirely and now only remember that I took these steps, and not the steps themselves.

What I did was invest in a trackable (Ekster-brand) wallet, that comes with a chip that I can track through my phone and find anywhere in the world. By far the most expensive wallet I’ve ever owned ($70 or 90, I forget), it has also proved useless if I can’t remember exactly what to do to implement it.

The one thing Ekster does very poorly is provide documentation. They don’t really explain how to use it and my issue with the product has to do with the infrequency that it needs to be used. That is, I should have written myself a memo upon receiving it detailing exactly how activate the tracker, where I keep the tracker, steps I need to take. Right now, a year or so after purchasing, I have only a vague memory that the wallet contains a tracking device, and obviously I didn’t even remember that much until I found it last night using the tried and true method of freaking out until I happened upon it.

So if anyone has one of these (or similar) wallets, could you remind me of the process? Or direct me to some q-and-a site that talks me through it? I want to write the whole thing down and keep that memo handy.

I made things worse, btw, by purchasing various devices for similar tracking products, thinking I’d do some personal testing. So I bought the Ekster wallet, plus an Ekster tracker for my keys, and a Chipolo tracker for my laptop, and a Tile for my backpack, and something else for my phone and…who knows at this point? I’m overwhelmed by all the devices I’ve bought to track my stuff electronically and I’m virtually back to step one, where I have no tracking devices at all, because I own too many, use them too rarely, and I don’t remember how any of them are activated.

If you’ve dealt successfully with any of these products, please feel free to tell me either what you do so they are useful, or where I can find some more information about using them.

2

I can’t help directly, but clearly one of the things you need for a successful conclusion is to “clean house” and have only one brand of tracker and one app on your phone or whatever with entries for all your devices in one place.

And perhaps a tickler in whatever reminder app you use to have you test all this stuff once a month. Which is much about helping you remember how to use the app as it an actual test of the chips attached to your various personal effects.

3

Get a Tile card and put it in you normal not-tracked-by-the-NSA wallet and find it via Bluetooth signal. Problem solved.

Stranger

4

Isn’t Bluetooth awfully short range to claim worldwide tracking?

5

Make sure to always keep the memo on your person, say by storing in your wallet.

From their site, it looks like their standard tracker card uses the Chipolo network. For Android/iPhone:

You’ll have to install the app and register your card.

6

Anyone who claims “worldwide tracking” for Bluetooth is a scammer, ignorant, or both. That’s not how it works.

Bluetooth devices (wireless speakers, mice and keyboards, and so on) are relatively short range. Bluetooth trackers are longer range because the amount of data they send is very small, literally just the item’s presence. The range is up to 500m. Which is pretty good if it’s for something you misplace and can’t find, but you know it’s “around here somewhere”.

“Worldwide” tracking is done via something like GPS. The word “global” is the first part of the name for a reason. That will track something anywhere on the planet (under the proper conditions of course).

Here’s a little article about it (note that it’s written by a company that makes and sells them, so not totally unbiased):

One important thing to note is that Bluetooth trackers are different from GPS trackers.

GPS tracking technology provides location updates in real-time, and does so through third-party connections, while Bluetooth tracking technology relies on your mobile device to update the location of the item it is attached to.

If you usually misplace your keys, wallet, or phone around the house, in your car, or at the office, a Bluetooth finder is what you need.

If you lose your things when outside or if you want to track your car or bike, a GPS tracker is better suited for you.

So even a company that sells them will warn you of the limitations. A Bluetooth tracker is not going to do you any good if you leave your wallet somewhere out in the public and you have no clue where it is.

If you can’t remember if you left it in your jacket hanging in the closet, or in your bedroom, or on the kitchen table, and you’re trying to leave the house quickly, then it should be very useful.

ETA: Slightly ninja’d; funny that Chipolo was the same site I found for info.

7

Well, the way it works for Apple AirTags is that their Bluetooth signal is picked up by any nearby iPhone, so you get close to worldwide tracking.

8

Okay, so it uses a kind of mesh network piggybacking on random iPhones. That’s certainly better. It’s still not anywhere close to GPS but it sounds much more helpful than requiring a 500m or less range between the tag and your particular iPhone.

9

Chipolo works the same way, where anyone on the network can (anonymously) update the location of your item. Unfortunately, I suspect their network is much less robust than Apple’s, since Apple includes every new iPhone by default, while Chipolo is going to be limited to their own userbase. Probably low millions vs. hundreds of millions of people.

10

I think I’ve identified one of my many issues with the tracking device: I got a new phone a few months ago, and lost many of the apps I had downloaded. If I install the Chipolo (or Ekster?) app on my new phone, will it recognize the tracking device for me? Or is it more complicated than that?

BTW, and I know this isn’t the pit, but GODDAMN TO HELL the Verizon tech who upsold me on getting a new phone (that he assured me would have all the apps, the notes, the photos on my old, slightly malfunctioning old phone) but in reality lots of stuff I had on there is gone.

11

I haven’t used the app so I couldn’t say for sure. But I’m sure it’ll have some registration/pairing step. One possible problem: if you registered the card previously, you’ll probably need access to the same account, since I doubt they’ll allow registering the card to multiple accounts. So you’ll need the username/password, or go through the usual password recovery rigamarole.

12

No, I’m able to login through Google (?!) so I just learned that the tracker in my wallet needs to be recharged via sunlight, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see if it takes a charge. Oddly, Ekster did send me a reminder a while back that I need to recharge the battery, which sounded complicated to me because I forgot about the solar charger so I put it to the back of my mind instead of just placing the tracker in the sunlight, which I’ll do tomorrow.

13

Don’t forget the tiny chip that was implanted when you were vaccinated against Covid-19, which will allow government agencies to locate you. :clown_face:

14

Yes, Tile works the same way also. It will find any phone with the app installed that’s within Bluetooth range, then use that phone’s GPS to tell you approximately where your item is.

15

I know that Airtags can be activated merely by bringing them into proximity of an iPhone. Theoretically/in principle a different phone might be made to work, but as far as I know you would need an Apple ID anyway, because it pairs with an Apple ID, and then you can use that ID to locate them as long as they have been near an iPhone, even if you are nowhere near the vicinity.

16

Like i said, my mistake (or one of them) was going whole-hog on this trackable business.

I’m far from the most tech-savvy guy in the world, and I tend to freak out when I misplace something, so in a fit of passion, I bought a tile, an Ekster wallet and keychain (both Chipolo-linked) and another brand of electronic tracker , thinking I would compare them and consolidate. I linked my wallet, keys, backpack (I think that was the Tile thingy), laptop, and my cel phone, which are the five valuables I misplace most often, though right now I can’t remember what my cel phone is connected to. It was too much, all at once, and I’m slowly backtracking now, trying to deduce what’s connected to what, and to write down exactly what I need to do to locate each one.

I should have started with one device and one tracker, and expanded much more slowly. Maybe I need to start this process all over.

17

ETA: @DPRK 2 posts above …

I just checked on my Android and the Google app store has a few apps that claim to detect airtags. One even written by Apple. But no mention in any of their documentation that they will report a found airtag to Apple HQ. Just that you can use your android device to detect nearby airtags and display their location relative to yours. Sorta.

So maybe a solution to find my wife’s apple-tagged keys at home while her iphone is charging, but useless for me to help some random schmoe find his apple-tagged stuff left out in the world.

18

That is correct; the official Apple app named “Tracker Detect” merely scans (via Bluetooth; don’t think it tries other comms) your vicinity and, if it finds any Airtags, it can make them beep. No way to access your Apple ID or add/remove any devices.

If you want to access the Apple Find My network from e.g. an Android phone, the software is here, but you will still need a computer or VM running macOS to relay the API requests (you need an Apple ID to be able to download location reports from the Apple servers, plus each Apple ID can only be paired to 16 devices, otherwise the network would be susceptible to simple DDoS).

19

An iphone will automatically alert you if you’re around an airtag that’s moving with you & isn’t yours (ie. someone throws one in your bag trying to track you). It’s possible there’s been a change but the Android version required one to open the app & click on ‘search for airtag’; therefore, unless they’re paranoid, an Android user won’t know they’re being tracked the way an iphone user does.

If it’s a safety thing, which is the way apple bills it, then it should apply to everyone, not just those with a certain brand of phone.

20

Install AirGuard instead of Tracker Detect. That should do what you want.