Do You Care About Find My Device Privacy Settings? [Poll]

Find My Device’s offline tracking only works when a lot of people have the right settings, but Google initially rolled the feature out with the worst settings possible, essentially making the network worthless. On a personal level, do you actually care whether or not your device is used to locate other offline devices, and what setting do you use?

Without context, being told that your device is being used to locate and track offline devices around you would likely unsettle you. The expectation is that your personal data is now available because it sends data about a lost device to the cloud, even if you had no idea it was doing that.

The reality is that Google uses devices connected to the Find My Device network to ping other Android devices. Doing so allows users to get location data on their lost device in a way that’s accurate and up to date, even if it isn’t connected to the internet. That process is end-to-end encrypted, and Google assures users that their data is safe, even though it was used to locate another unknown phone.

When your Android device locates other devices, it sends location data encrypted by a key that the located device can access — no one else. Google notes that this encryption is the same used in Google Password Manager. Your device is simply passing that data along, and Google says it can’t identify you when your device does that.

That said, Google delivered the functionality and set users to ping offline device locations in high-traffic areas only for the sake of privacy. To circle back, the network is crowdsourced, and the only way it works is if people opt-in to allowing their phones to locate offline devices and other trackers. The network has the foundation to be a fantastic tool, but the feature isn’t well-known among the public.

Offline device tracking is secure, but do you trust it?

Google says the feature is encrypted, which means using it poses little to no risk to the users. Still, some might not feel comfortable using it. Again, the idea that your device is being used as a beacon for offline trackers and phones so others can get location data for their property might not rub everyone the right way.

Google gives several offline tracking options for users to choose from:

• Off
• Without network
• With network in high-traffic areas only
• With network in all areas

The “off” option disables Find My Device altogether, and the “without network” choice will disable offline tracking participation. Those two require little security promise, but the latter two connect to the offline device network, which needs other phones to act as beacons.

We’re interested to see what readers have selected, even with the promise of encryption.

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