Although you may not be familiar with these DULT acronyms, and it is even possible that it is not the acronym that ultimately defines this technological solution, there is no doubt that marks before and after in security in relation to tracking beaconsthe kind of device that’s undeniably useful, but with a huge security/privacy hole that’s still not fully addressed and, even worse, could potentially affect anyone, user or not.

This is not a new issue, we first talked about it over two years ago, and anyone can use a tracking beacon. always know the location of the third partyand there is evidence that this type of use has occurred in the past. For example, just place the AirTag in an invisible area of ​​the vehicle and until its owner is aware of its presence, we can find its location very easily.

Each manufacturer of these devices can develop a solution that identifies their own beacons that are not associated with the user, but the problem arises with cross-use. i.e, What happens if I have an Apple device but am being tracked using a beacon from Samsung or another manufacturer connected to the Android ecosystem? This is where DULT (Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers) comes in, an industry level (not manufacturer) solution that will make a big difference in this regard.

Version 01 of the “Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers” specification has just been uploaded to the IETF! This is an unwanted tracker specification that Google and Apple are developing together.

Google rolled out unwanted tracking alerts on Android earlier this year,… https://t.co/gK4pFEIuPy pic.twitter.com/g4w3JBZSDf

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) December 20, 2023

Here is very good news in this regard, and it is The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has already published version 01 of the DULT specification, bringing us closer to its standardization. Obviously, there is still no specific date when this will happen, but it is known that both Apple and Google have previously confirmed that they will immediately adopt it, and in fact are direct promoters of its development.

Currently, Android already offers protection against beacons, both those designed for the Android tracking system and Apple’s AirTags. Cupertino though stated that they would wait for DULT standardization (or whatever name it eventually gets) to implement it into its operating systems, as the technology Google currently uses is provisional. So if they deliver on this (and I suspect they will), one of the biggest risks associated with these nifty but still dangerous devices will finally disappear.

In addition, this will be great news for Android users, as Google has been waiting for Apple to implement DULT for some time to finally launch Find my Device, a service that it has been working on since 2020 and which was originally going to launch a few months ago, but the company decided to postpone until this risk is eliminated. According to various sources The service is now ready for deployment, which will happen once DULT is accepted by Apple.