TagAlong
Alex Bellon, Alex Yen, Pat Pannuto · 2023
We demonstrate how to leverage Apple's Find My protocol, most well known as the underlying protocol of the AirTag, for arbitrary data-muling and location services. This provides a new "infrastructure-free" deployment, where areas with frequent human activity can take advantage of this zero-cost backhaul network. While there are severe limitations (e.g. no acknowledgement channel back to the sending device), Find My-based networking could still be a reliable backhaul with sufficient transmission redundancy and knowledge of deployment context. Towards that end, we develop TagAlong, a protocol for scalable, efficient data transmission on the Find My network. We implement a proof-of-concept and demonstrate throughput up to 12.5 bytes/sec and up to a 97% data reception rate.