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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Serious question – which commercially available GPS tracker can be used for this purpose? I have been looking for one for years (not for stalking, I promise) and absolutely nothing fits the bill. They are all large (impossible to slip into, say, a purse), expensive, have minimum $20/mo subscriptions (with credit card registration), require you to register a SIM card, and have a battery life measured in days.

Now you just have to walk into an Apple Store with $20 cash and set up a fake Apple ID.

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It is non trivial to setup an apple id without tying it to your identifiable information. Using an airtag to track someone will notify them if they have any apple products or check with a non apple phone.

Vodafone curve is a commercially available gps tracker that is about the same size and cost of an airtag. A vodafone sim is £3 a month, and you can sign up for a pre paid sim card without a credit card or providing identifiable info. There is a bike version that ties into a bike tail light for charging. The battery life can be much longer this way.

There are non cell based ones like the See.Sense AIR, the battery life is generally much longer

$4 GPS Tracker https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Mini-Car-GSM-GPRS-GPS...

$5 Pre-Paid SIM https://www.amazon.com/SpeedTalk-Mobile-Tracking-Locators-Wi...

I think one (more expensive) answer is to use the best tracking service that currently exists: Google Android OS. Buy a small android phone [1]. Put it in power save mode, to reduce power draw, and drop it in.

This would be much less alarming than some tracking device or an AirTag, especially if you put some innocent looking picture on the Home Screen, so it looks like some kid dropped their phone in their purse, on accident.

Reading this comment thread, I assume many here would agree that we should ban all small smartphones.

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/best-small-android-phones-7...

They tend to be larger and more expensive, because they generally need to contain a GPS receiver to know their location and a cell phone transmitter and data plan to transmit that location.

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