24 ms·

I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress

549 points by miles 5y ago

1024core 5y ago
Is there anything in the Android ecosystem that interoperates with AirTags?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- momothereal 5y ago
  Sort of; if you find a lost AirTag, you can get the contact info from an Android device via NFC: https://youtu.be/ehv3zQAa9zM?t=528 https://youtu.be/ehv3zQAa9zM?t=528
- knolan 5y ago
  You can use NFC on an Android device to read the owners details on a lost AirTag. The firmware was recently dumped so maybe someone will figure out a way to build an alternative network to Find my.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Samsung has their own system: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00088244/ https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00088244/ But nothing interops with AirTags yet and I'm 100% sure they never will, since AirTags relies on Apple's backend to work. The actual devices are the simplest part - and you can get 3rd party AirTags already.
wlesieutre 5y ago
Regarding "my friend left the envelope on a table in his house" not producing the "AirTag found moving with you" alert, this is obviously by design. You get the alert if the tag is planted on your person/vehicle and following you around, not if it happens to be sitting still in a location that you frequent. The alternative is being constantly bombarded with alerts because other residents of an apartment building also own AirTags, which is not going to be useful to anyone.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm wondering if the 3 days rule is for being around a certain iphone for 3 days. Otherwise, every person coming in contact with an old airtag would be notified as soon as they come in contact with it.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    AFAIK if the owner iPhone checks in with the tag, then everything's fine again. So if you're a jealous husband who wants to track your wife's whereabouts as she goes through the day before returning to your home every night, well Apple has the product for you! Or if you're stalking Cindy, just walk by her place every few days... until she spends the night at Peter's, but hey, your iPhone will tell you that, and where to find them.
    - sedgjh23 5y ago
      If you’re stalking someone there are effective alternatives with much lower exposure risk.
      - djhn 5y ago
        I'm hesitant to ask because of the implication, but also slightly afraid of not know about these threat vectors. So what methods are you talking about?
        ghaff 5y ago
        As others have said, there are widely available GPS trackers with cellular connections. There are, of course, also all the ways people did such things pre-GPS. i.e. just finding out where a person lives which is mostly pretty easy.
        goldenkey 5y ago
        The GPS locators are heavier with shorter battery life. This has been my experience from GPS pet trackers. Since Bluetooth Low Energy does not require as much energy or range, the form factor is greatly decreased.
HunterWare 5y ago
The main complaint about it “tracking the friend” seems invalid. The tag isn’t “moving with him”, it’s sitting on a counter. That isn’t tracking, more accurately it’s basically a lost tag at that point.
- fjni 5y ago
  I think this is a great question. And I don't have an answer for it. I do think it's much less clear though: If I attach it to your car to find out where you're parking your car, according to your logic it also presumably wouldn't trigger. But it's still a problematic and unintended use of the technology. What if I merely want to find out where you live, not where you are at any point in time. This creates lots of problems for people at increased risk here that to me aren't answered sufficiently.
  - hundchenkatze 5y ago
    The difference is that a tag mailed to someone didn't follow them and their iPhone, it just shows up one day. In that case the person sending the tag obviously already knows where you live anyway. In your example, attaching it to someone's car (presumably while at work, shopping, etc) it will follow them home and their iPhone would see that tag the entire trip until they get home at which point it would notify the tracked person.
    - fjni 5y ago
      Got it! The distinction being that the location changed while in the vicinity of one iphone. Thanks for clarifying!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      So I am an evil stalker, and I want to find out where my target lives. I know the Target has a Spouse. I stalk both, and spot that Target uses an iPhone, but Spouse uses an Android phone. I attach the AirTag to Spouse's bag/jacket, in hopes they'll bring it home. With luck, from the POV of Target's phone, the tag will look like it just "showed up one day", at least for a while. End of story. As a real me, I'd hope that one could bring the tag to the police, and law enforcement would be able to get the details on the person who owns it? Assuming the answer is "yes", this should deter most malicious use, as even with a burner iPhone/Apple account, the owner of that tracker would be exposing a big trail of their activities.
fjni 5y ago
As a user, I'd love the option to decide whether I want to help in this system or not. Similar to how I can opt-in to sharing analytics with Apple. I just might help out. But the idea that by owning an iPhone I'm automatically opted into this and I can't (temporarily) disable it is concerning. Especially since the feature to alert users of the possible privacy invasion outlined here, seems to not yet be working as advertised. It's unclear to me if the "Participate in 'Find My Network'" option is what I'm talking about. But I also don't remember being asked about this at any point.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  Apple is surely against tracking and in favor of opt-ins for privacy... as long as it's the competitors' products and not its own.
  - samatman 5y ago
    I don't really think either of those things apply here, although the implementation is pretty crucial. AirTags have some protections against using them to track people, and the AirTag network doesn't appear to leak any private information. That last part could be completely wrong, for all we know: it relies on the software to be correct. The whole point of the gizmo is to "track", and I struggle to come up with an improvement to their solution to allowing users to track things but not stalk people. This is being automatically enrolled in some kind of public good, where "public" is the Apple ecosystem. Is that bad? I mean, I don't mind, but offering an opt-out seems... polite, at least?
    - daemoon 5y ago
      It does let you to opt-out.
    - petepete 5y ago
      Stalking people who don't use iOS is fine though. It's a good thing they're not as important.
bityard 5y ago
Back in the early 2000s when hand-held GPS receivers/loggers started becoming relatively cheap, some white-hat hackers tried sending them through the mail to see how the postal system worked and produced several articles and presentations on the results. It turned out the USPS took a very dim view of this kind of thing. I can't find any of this research now, of course, because all the search engines want to sell me tracking devices and package tracking services.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  If you (or anyone) manages to find it, I’d appreciate a link, sounds like a good read
  - coolspot 5y ago
    https://webmonkeyuk.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/putting-a-gps-tracker-in-the-mail/ https://webmonkeyuk.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/putting-a-gps-t...
    - orhmeh09 5y ago
      This is from 2012 and it concerns the UK mail system, not USPS.
- irae 5y ago
  Sigh. SEO and other kinds of "almost search spam" has being reducing the utility to search for certain phrases impossible. It's about time search engines create a filter like -selling:shirts so it can go back to working as it should.
- bob1029 5y ago
  Maybe this is what you were thinking of? https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/hacker-sends-this-through-the-mail-to-record-a-video-of-the-process/ https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/hacker-sends-this-through-th... https://web.archive.org/web/20130411184048/http://www.rubenvandervleuten.com/AtoB.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130411184048/http://www.rubenv...
- 5y ago
fallat 5y ago
Is this possible with other tag systems? Seems like a great way to send something with "better tracking" which is expensive.
- klausjensen 5y ago
  Not really. The reason this works so well is the massive amount of IOS devices participating. I have some Tile-trackers (which I think used to be the biggest player in this space - until Apple came along), and while they are OK, the number of devices tracking them is abysmal compared to the Airtags.
- andrewmunsell 5y ago
  I bought my first Tile a couple years ago: Someone had their rental car broken into, and their stuff stolen. He had a Tile on his keys, and noticed that he got a ping outside of SLU in Seattle, so he posted in the /r/seattle subreddit. I happened to be working there at the time, so I messaged him and went for a walk. It took me about 30 min to find his keys (his bag was gone, they must have dumped it elsewhere) in a bush, which I was able to mail back to him. So, I bought a couple Tiles since that was proof to me that it worked. But, looking back, over the day or so it was there, he only got two pings to my recollection: one person that walked by (and caused him to post to Reddit), and me once I found it. AirTag's network is just so much bigger. I'm pretty convinced you would get at most a single ping if you mailed a Tile somewhere. I also use a Tile in my snowboard bag. I was always able to confirm the bag made it on the plane because my phone would connect through the floor of the plane into the cargo hold, but I'd be very lucky if I got a ping when the bag was in the baggage belt system underneath the airport. Tile was a great idea and worked well if you had other Tile users nearby. It's not really their fault the network is so small, it's a hard problem to solve to seed that network unless you happen to own a billion devices...
  - gord288 5y ago
    Tile just announced they’re partnering with Amazon so that Tile devices will participate in their ‘Sidewalk’ network. This will help them compete with the network of Apple’s billion+ ‘Find My’ devices. https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/07/tile-teams-with-amazon-in-attempt-to-compete-with-apples-airtag-and-formidable-find-my-network/ https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/07/tile-teams-with-amazon-i...
underseacables 5y ago
Is there any way to opt out of the AirTag network?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  Yeah, Find My is an app that needs your location services to work. ...If your Location Services is off, or your Find My app doesn't have permission to access Location Services, it shouldn't be able to report your device (nor other peoples' devices) location to Apple.
- fastball 5y ago
  Don't enable "Find My iPhone" when setting up your phone.
- ezfe 5y ago
  There is a switch in Find my iPhone location settings for the "Find My network" that presumably opts you out of this.
  - underseacables 5y ago
    They does seem to do the trick. I’m ok with using a service like that to find a phone, but to utilize the devices of others (while a noble idea) creeps too far into the scary for me.
spaceywilly 5y ago
"The point of these alerts is to let people know if they’re being tracked surreptitiously by someone who placed an AirTag in their bag, their pocket, or their car. Three days is already much too long, but the fact that no alerts are occurring after four days is disturbing." As I understand this feature monitors the signal strength of nearby airtags to identify ones that are travelling with you. In this case, if the person left it on a table at their house, they would constantly be moving in and out of range, so it's not moving with them. "It’s also not clear how often AirTag locations update. I gave my partner an AirTag last week for her to take when she went on an errand, driving about 20 miles from home. Since she has an iPhone, I expected to see frequent updates in the Find My app, but that wasn’t the case." Again, this is probably by design. If it worked as the author expected and gave you frequent updates, it could easily be used to track an unsuspecting person's location. This design seems much better. It still will give you enough information to locate your lost item, but it is not enough to track down the location of a single iPhone user.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > "It’s also not clear how often AirTag locations update. I gave my partner an AirTag last week for her to take when she went on an errand, driving about 20 miles from home. Since she has an iPhone, I expected to see frequent updates in the Find My app, but that wasn’t the case." This is almost certainly a product of iOS battery management. Presumably there was only one iPhone in range during the drive (GF’s). If the iPhone isn’t plugged in, then it generally doesn’t update its precise location unless it detect “substantial movement”, which is normally triggered by thing like switching cell tower. Net result is the AirTags location only get updated when the nearby iPhone thinks it’s power efficient to do so.
doublerabbit 5y ago
How long until they tag these to our ears and assign us a personal number? With Elon's offer of servitude[1] on Mars and these, we may encounter George Oswells 1984 pretty soon. Airtags, just another piece of e-waste to poison the planet. [1] https://twitter.com/PicklePunchD/status/1217991463503446016 https://twitter.com/PicklePunchD/status/1217991463503446016 How long until Apple decides to discontinue the tags on their current generation of devices forcing you to upgrade?
- Odenwaelder 5y ago
  I, for one, don't like losing my keys or umbrella and really like AirTags.
  - doublerabbit 5y ago
    I've not-often lost my keys nor umbrella, do you live in a castle? How often do you loose those things? And now your tagging your items just for apple to see besides no one has answered how does that justify the e-waste these tags produces? Seeing as I've been rated-limited. > Not sure what you mean there, but Apple doesn't get to know where anything is. To say Apple doesn't get to see any information, pfft. I trust them as much as any thief. Can you prove this? > Something something covid vaccines and 5G base stations Not at all. I'm hoping to get my covid vaccine, have you?
    - mehphp 5y ago
      Do you have a phone, a computer or even a relatively new car? I presume you do. You are already being tracked.
      - doublerabbit 5y ago
        Totally yeah, no car though. I walk in to a shop and I'm already tagged. I walk in to the streets, I'm tagged. There's no hiding from surveillance. But now to allow a tag report back where your X is located is ridiculous. Why you want to submit to a heat map of your objects, and what you do with them, I don't know. Call me cynical. I pity the people who feel its a fantastic toy when normally it's the same people criticizing about X FANG company thing. Yet they go and buy the recent crud they release. Talk about hypocritical.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I am very unhappy about this new tracking service. Scenario: sinister stalker (government agent, for example) attaches an airtag to my car. All iPhone users in the area will be happily reporting tag location and helping stalker in his malicious designs. How do I protect myself against this, if I am an Android user?
- mvanaltvorst 5y ago
  <100$ GPS car trackers that use cellular and are arguably better for tracking cars already exist.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    They are much more expensive and require way more power, so they can't track you for a year without recharging. Also, they need to transmit data using cellular network, which also drains a lot of power. The problem is that this new service makes such snooping very casual.
    - fastball 5y ago
      "Casual stalker" sounds like an oxymoron to me.
      - gnicholas 5y ago
        That may change, as people realize how easy it is to track others. Will there be stories of guys who 'accidentally' leave their keys/backpack/jacket in the car of some girl who gave them a ride home from a party? I wouldn't be surprised if within a year we start seeing devices that can scan for nearby Airtags/Tiles/etc. so you can see if there's anything in your car before you head home.
        spideymans 5y ago
        >Will there be stories of guys who 'accidentally' leave their keys/backpack/jacket in the car of some girl who gave them a ride home from a party? Damn, that is a good point. It'll be very difficult to prove that anyone stalking using AirTags had malicious/illegal intent. Far harder than, say, a purpose-built GPS tracker.
the_arun 5y ago
AirTag or similar tool could be a great way to track important packages we mail. Courier services could use this by default & provide better tracking data for their customers. I recently mailed a document to India & I have no clue where it is.
- hughrr 5y ago
  You can buy devices for this purpose already: https://tive.co/tive-solo-5g/ https://tive.co/tive-solo-5g/
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    To get started, they say “Request a Trial”. You know it’s going to be pricy. And difficult to resell once you’re done.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      I'm gonna go with "not resellable". It's a 99% certainty that the device is backed by a SaaS backend with a monthly subscription per device. You won't be owning the device at any point.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  I’m looking forward to a world where the iPhone mesh net lets me move any amount of data from place to place without needing any long-range wired or wireless network link, just apple phones moving around. We largely go the same places every day, and apple could figure out how to send a message or request for a song/movie/file/update and it just appears a few hours or couple days later. Like a transparent sneakernet that uses onion routing. We have some satellite-internet fed remote areas in Canada, and how to get your phone updated without a local IX means everyone chews through data just for system updates. They do have daily or weekly flights however. Loading up an SD card for the trips back and forth could work, but complicated. When MS released the Zune with wifi, I hoped I could sit in an airport and “borrow” songs from other users/hosters, but I don’t think it worked that way. Worldwide, high-latency LAN. For basically free by doing what we already do.
bosswipe 5y ago
As an Android user I hate AirTags because it will reduce the power of Tile's cross-platform finding network making it less likely that my tiles will be found. This means that Google should fight back by integrating a finding network into Android OS. It's more anti-competitive platform lock-in.
- kube-system 5y ago
  I had Tile on some lost luggage recently. Even though Tile had the biggest network, it still wasn't enough. My luggage visited a few large international airports without a single ping. It really seems that OS integration is the only way to get enough scale.
  - temp667 5y ago
    Same experience - I also went all in on tile - it really does not have the density of reporting and I'm also pretty sure lacks privacy protections apple has.
    - katbyte 5y ago
      and none of the anti stalking measures.
- fastball 5y ago
  Have you actually used the tile network to successfully recover something? I was big on tile a few years ago, but they didn't help me find two things that were lost. Just not enough of a network. I'm hopeful AirTags will work better.
- acomjean 5y ago
  Its a network effect. Its basically the dominant players become more dominant. It makes apples phone's more useful, and Apple is unlikely to let any competitors use they're phone for a similar service, especially not by default. If you have an iOS device, you're tracking all these airtags around you physically for Apple. Apple's not paying you for that service. It probably uses a little battery life, but all these individual device make the network great. But if you bought an airtag that's a great thing.
madjam002 5y ago
Does anyone think in the future we’ll see DIY AirTag alternatives that can participate in the Find My network? They’re just BLE beacons right?
- maxwell 5y ago
  https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack#how-does-apples-find-my-network-work https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack#how-does-apples-f...
  - UncleEntity 5y ago
    I was under the impression that airtags used some kind of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum so there was no chance to emulate one without some dedicated hardware but that link seems to say otherwise. Now there's hope that with a little hacking the iBeacon emulator I coded up to run on my laptop can participate on the Find My network, sweet.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ChuckMcM 5y ago
Time to tape these things to packages on the doorstep to see where the thieves take them.
- paxys 5y ago
  So now along with an expensive package they also get an expensive airtag for free
- Etheryte 5y ago
  As seen in the glitter bomb experiment [0], many package thieves simply drive a few blocks, open the package and then toss whatever isn't valuable. Not that likely it will give you much useful to go on. [0] https://youtu.be/xoxhDk-hwuo https://youtu.be/xoxhDk-hwuo
  - majormunky 5y ago
    So that experiment ended up being people that knew about the device, in the description of your linked video he explains what happened.
    - Etheryte 5y ago
      That's not an accurate statement of what happened at all. Here's an outtake from the description: > To compensate [people whose houses I left the package at] for their time and willingness to risk putting a package on their porch I offered financial compensation for any successful recoveries of the package. [...] I've since confirmed in these two cases, the “thieves" were actually acquaintances of the person helping me. I have since removed those reactions from the original video. All of the content in the video right now is legitimate and the video's author was not aware some of the original recordings were fake.
- mobilemidget 5y ago
  Mark Rober made some nice YouTube/device for those porch pirates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4
anonAndOn 5y ago
Stunning. Apple has built a surveillance system that no government in the world could ever afford. Despots, dictators and duly elected presidents around the world are rejoicing at how cheap and easy it is to keep tabs on your political enemies, opposition leaders and those meddlesome human rights campaigners. Put a small tag on their cars, their briefcases, their kids' lunchboxes and just watch where the little tags go. Got a secret meeting with your fellow revolutionaries? Better hope nobody with an iPhone passed nearby on the trip to, from and during the meeting.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Yep, AirTag has definitely enabled all of that. No other, better options exist, AirTag is the first way for the baddies to covertly track people. Oh, unless the people they want to track also have an iPhone, because then they'll get alerted to the tracking. Damn!
  - anonAndOn 5y ago
    Is there another tiny tag that automatically pairs with a billion mobile listening stations? If so, where can I buy it?
    - jeromegv 5y ago
      You can get a GPS device that automatically pairs with satellite in the sky, regardless of the devices around it. Are you worried about someone putting a GPS device in your bag?
      - angry_octet 5y ago
        GPS trackers don't work well inside, they are large due to battery requirements, and are easily jammed. They are really only practical for tracking vehicles, where they can be wired in or use a large battery. It is significantly incriminatory if you are found to be using one.
        5y ago
fastball 5y ago
I honestly don't understand the concern about being stalked at all. Ya'll honestly think an AirTag is the best way for a stalker to track you?
- katbyte 5y ago
  I think most people haven't considered stalking like that and don't realize how many cheap and small devices are out there already.
- martini333 5y ago
  best way? maybe not. very easy and cheap; yes
  - fastball 5y ago
    I don't see how there could be much overlap in the Venn diagram of "people that are determined to stalk you" and "people that can't afford a $30 GPS tracker but can afford a $30 AirTag (even though they apparently own an iPhone)".
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Scary thing is the cheaper trackers already exist: https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-Tracking/dp/B07N4DHFZM https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-... But the ease of use of AirTags is undeniable.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Lol, I thought they were sticking to "show legitimate non-illegal uses" until the last picture says "Easily mounts under car with included magnet" (not technically illegal if it's your own car but the use case for that is not universal).
francoisp 5y ago
I wonder if this is legal. I know Apple asks you to disable location tracking when returning devices to them for warranty. This could be abused by terrorists to use the postman nefariously...
- ezfe 5y ago
  They don't ask you to disable it for the mail, they ask you because they can't recycle it if it's locked out.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  You do know you can mail an Android phone in the mail too and track the exact location?
eplanit 5y ago
It seems creepy to me, especially given how many legitimate reasons there are now to distrust Big Tech. It seems like an abusive husband can plant a tag on his wife (or her car, or purse, ...) and track her quite effectively. Also, even without that, doesn't it just give Apple even more insight as to how you live your life? This seems like one of those 'features' where 20% of the benefit is for the end-user, but the gold mine 80% is in the long-tail that goes to the company.
barbegal 5y ago
If you have an existing Bluetooth device like a Tile then you can reprogram it to emulate an AirTag and Apple users will help you track it https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22313461/openhaystack-apple-find-my-network-diy-airtags https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22313461/openhaystack-appl... The worrying part is this could be combined with countermeasures to prevent the anti stalking measure from working and even prevent it being discovered by a bug detector. Thankfully Apple has a lot of visibility of the system so presumably would be able to track down bad actors and aid law enforcement.
- jfoster 5y ago
  It's not clear to me that Apple are always willing to work with law enforcement, even when their customers are indisputably criminal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
boplicity 5y ago
>anyone who is in the presence of an AirTag that has been separated from its owner for three days will get an alert on their iPhone That sounds exactly like extortion. "Buy an iPhone, or we won't tell you whether people are tracking your every movement." This is screaming for real regulation. Yikes.
- flowerlad 5y ago
  When moved, any AirTag separated for a period of time from the person who registered it will make a sound to alert those nearby. If you find an AirTag after hearing it make a sound, you can use any device that has NFC, such as an iPhone or Android phone, to see if its owner marked it as lost and help return it. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227
  - VonGallifrey 5y ago
    Unless a nefarious person opened the AirTag and removed the speaker, but that can't happen and there aren't any videos of how to do this on YouTube.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      A truly nefarious person has dozens of other ways of tracking you. Not being able to do it with an AirTag is the least of their worries.
kumarharsh 5y ago
Back in the days, I used to watch Spiderman cartoons, and was amazed by the small trackers Spidey put on people he needed to track, and got the location in real time. I wanted to see something like that someday. This AirTag does seem very nice in that respect. But then I realize what a gigantic privacy nightmare this can be for a large portion of our population. Stalkers can put a tracker on you, and you'll never get notified if you don't have an iPhone? What if the user doesn't even have a smartphone? How does Apple think they'll handle this scenario? Can it even be handled?
- yoz-y 5y ago
  The tag will beep after 3 days, then you can tap it with any nfc enabled phone to get the owners contact information, or more probably, throw it in the trash.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    I wonder how many times this will trigger for dump truck drivers if they're thrown in the trash...
  - isignal 5y ago
    Someone will probably figure out a way to disable the speaker.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > What if the user doesn't even have a smartphone? How real is this concern anymore?
  - kumarharsh 5y ago
    KaiOS is the second most popular OS in India - more popular than iOS :)
artur_makly 5y ago
damn. Apparently its not advised for your dog-tracking: https://www.imore.com/why-doesnt-apple-want-you-track-your-dog-airtag https://www.imore.com/why-doesnt-apple-want-you-track-your-d...
- barbazoo 5y ago
  > In short, while you can put an AirTag on your dog or cat, Apple does not encourage it to cover its own butt in case of legal action. I don't get the "not advised" part from that page. It just sounds like they're just not advertising this articular use case.
ta1234567890 5y ago
One thing that is inconvenient about Apple’s AirTags is that you can’t share them with other people. So for example, if a husband/wife share car keys, and the car keys have the wife’s AirTag, but then she misplaces her purse with both her phone and keys, the husband won’t be able to locate them. Another scenario is if one of them wants to put an AirTag on their phone, so that when they can’t find it, the other person can help them locate it. Anyway, I’m sure there are lots of situations in which it would be helpful for multiple people to be able to locate the same AirTag, yet this is not currently possible.
- ec109685 5y ago
  Interesting they allow you to find each other’s devices if you have shared family iCloud but not AirTags?
megablast 5y ago
What an awful way to show the data. Put it all on one map. Come on.
mrcartmenez 5y ago
Why is this person calling post mail? So confused
- alistairSH 5y ago
  I imagine because he's an American living in England.
m3kw9 5y ago
You don’t want the air tag to alert you if it’s stationary because your spouse could be also near the tag at home while you travelled for work.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zapdrive 5y ago
So... If a person does not have an iOS device, and someone plants this on them/their car? They could be tracked 24/7 and will have absolutely no idea, since "a tag is traveling with you" alert is only on iOS devices. How is this not a huge privacy concern?
- theshrike79 5y ago
  They could be tracked for exactly three days. Then the tag would start beeping. (This setting can be adjusted by Apple, it's not an on-device setting) You do know that this exact same tracking can be done with a dozen other devices, which are not made by Apple? If you're tracking a car, AirTags are pretty much the shittiest option and not even the cheapest. You can slap a $20 tracker with a magnet under the fender while walking past and get 1 meter realtime tracking.
  - zapdrive 5y ago
    3 days is long enough. Also, as others have pointed, although other options existed, Apple has made it easier to use and more accessible.
kuratkull 5y ago
The mailman must get a lot of these "A Tag is following you" during a typical workday.
bngybmgrglflps 5y ago
I think an apt analogy is Google Glass. It went without saying they didn't invent surreptitious video recording. This didn't prevent _overwhelming outcry_ over legitimate privacy concerns. The only difference I can see here is Apple's halo effect. Possible action items: - I will happily submit my Android location data to Apple to find out if I'm being tracked by an AirTag. Where's the API? (I realize this compromises the "theft prevention" use case. That's an unfortunate collision of interests. Maybe sell a Pro version, comparable to LoJack. If I understood correctly, "3 days since home" is too much window anyway.) - Let me use an iPhone with Find My disabled to receive stalker alerts, without participating in the mesh (read: sending the tag's location). Can someone confirm whether this is already how it works? As I see it, these are table stakes. The optics are not my problem: you're selling a $30 private investigator with no legal oversight. Doubt me? Volunteer at a women's shelter.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  >I will happily submit my Android location data to Apple to find out if I'm being tracked by an AirTag. No need. Your android device can already pick up the airtag beacons. Google (perhaps with Apples help) _need_ to get safety alerts working cross platform ASAP. Someone and likely many people are going to be hurt by this tech so this needs to be done, and hopefully before regulators kill the whole idea of tracker tags.
Ice_cream_suit 5y ago
I can imagine hostile state actors sending AirTags into the US military mail system to map relationships between people / entities. I hope that the military have instituted techniques to avoid this. Unfortunately, it might need millions of Faraday cages or banning Apple equipment from military installations.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Seriously? THIS is the scenario you came up with? How does your mind work, really?
teekert 5y ago
Is there an Android app for AirTags? Would be nice, then I could drop one in the car and have a cool visual of where the car went, even when my wife drives it with her Pocophone. Edit: You can apparently play a role in returning a lost AirTag [0]. But it would be nice if there was an app. Maybe even a more open ecosystem where the network could be leveraged. It has been tried before but failed, but Apple has a nice change here because they can force iDevices to play along (and I don't mind for once, I feel they do it the right way, with a focus on privacy). [0] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/2-ways-you-can-use-apple-airtag-with-an-android-phone/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/2-ways-you-can-use-apple-airtag-...
ifdefdebug 5y ago
If somebody tags me with such device and I find out, I wonder if I then can successfully sue Apple for transmitting my location without my consent (I am in Europe).
h0nd 5y ago
I still cant stop thinking about the potential of this solution not limited to Apple/iOS devices, such as an open protocol.
andreagrandi 5y ago
I can't find anywhere a simple answer to this use case: if I leave an Airtag in a bag, at home, and I leave for 1 week (without the bag): 1) will the tag start ringing? 2) Will my next door neighbour (who has an iPhone and I can often find it in my Airplay bluetooth range) receive a notification that someone is trying to track him? 3) Is my neighbour able to make my Airtag ring when I'm at home (and maybe sleeping) ? Thanks

549 points by miles 5y ago

1024core 5y ago

Is there anything in the Android ecosystem that interoperates with AirTags?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
momothereal 5y ago
Sort of; if you find a lost AirTag, you can get the contact info from an Android device via NFC: https://youtu.be/ehv3zQAa9zM?t=528 https://youtu.be/ehv3zQAa9zM?t=528
knolan 5y ago
You can use NFC on an Android device to read the owners details on a lost AirTag. The firmware was recently dumped so maybe someone will figure out a way to build an alternative network to Find my.
theshrike79 5y ago
Samsung has their own system: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00088244/ https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00088244/ But nothing interops with AirTags yet and I'm 100% sure they never will, since AirTags relies on Apple's backend to work. The actual devices are the simplest part - and you can get 3rd party AirTags already.

wlesieutre 5y ago

Regarding "my friend left the envelope on a table in his house" not producing the "AirTag found moving with you" alert, this is obviously by design. You get the alert if the tag is planted on your person/vehicle and following you around, not if it happens to be sitting still in a location that you frequent. The alternative is being constantly bombarded with alerts because other residents of an apartment building also own AirTags, which is not going to be useful to anyone.

xeromal 5y ago
Yeah, I'm wondering if the 3 days rule is for being around a certain iphone for 3 days. Otherwise, every person coming in contact with an old airtag would be notified as soon as they come in contact with it.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  AFAIK if the owner iPhone checks in with the tag, then everything's fine again. So if you're a jealous husband who wants to track your wife's whereabouts as she goes through the day before returning to your home every night, well Apple has the product for you! Or if you're stalking Cindy, just walk by her place every few days... until she spends the night at Peter's, but hey, your iPhone will tell you that, and where to find them.
  - sedgjh23 5y ago
    If you’re stalking someone there are effective alternatives with much lower exposure risk.
    - djhn 5y ago
      I'm hesitant to ask because of the implication, but also slightly afraid of not know about these threat vectors. So what methods are you talking about?
      - ghaff 5y ago
        As others have said, there are widely available GPS trackers with cellular connections. There are, of course, also all the ways people did such things pre-GPS. i.e. just finding out where a person lives which is mostly pretty easy.
        goldenkey 5y ago
        The GPS locators are heavier with shorter battery life. This has been my experience from GPS pet trackers. Since Bluetooth Low Energy does not require as much energy or range, the form factor is greatly decreased.

HunterWare 5y ago

The main complaint about it “tracking the friend” seems invalid. The tag isn’t “moving with him”, it’s sitting on a counter. That isn’t tracking, more accurately it’s basically a lost tag at that point.

fjni 5y ago
I think this is a great question. And I don't have an answer for it. I do think it's much less clear though: If I attach it to your car to find out where you're parking your car, according to your logic it also presumably wouldn't trigger. But it's still a problematic and unintended use of the technology. What if I merely want to find out where you live, not where you are at any point in time. This creates lots of problems for people at increased risk here that to me aren't answered sufficiently.
- hundchenkatze 5y ago
  The difference is that a tag mailed to someone didn't follow them and their iPhone, it just shows up one day. In that case the person sending the tag obviously already knows where you live anyway. In your example, attaching it to someone's car (presumably while at work, shopping, etc) it will follow them home and their iPhone would see that tag the entire trip until they get home at which point it would notify the tracked person.
  - fjni 5y ago
    Got it! The distinction being that the location changed while in the vicinity of one iphone. Thanks for clarifying!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    So I am an evil stalker, and I want to find out where my target lives. I know the Target has a Spouse. I stalk both, and spot that Target uses an iPhone, but Spouse uses an Android phone. I attach the AirTag to Spouse's bag/jacket, in hopes they'll bring it home. With luck, from the POV of Target's phone, the tag will look like it just "showed up one day", at least for a while. End of story. As a real me, I'd hope that one could bring the tag to the police, and law enforcement would be able to get the details on the person who owns it? Assuming the answer is "yes", this should deter most malicious use, as even with a burner iPhone/Apple account, the owner of that tracker would be exposing a big trail of their activities.

fjni 5y ago

As a user, I'd love the option to decide whether I want to help in this system or not. Similar to how I can opt-in to sharing analytics with Apple. I just might help out. But the idea that by owning an iPhone I'm automatically opted into this and I can't (temporarily) disable it is concerning. Especially since the feature to alert users of the possible privacy invasion outlined here, seems to not yet be working as advertised. It's unclear to me if the "Participate in 'Find My Network'" option is what I'm talking about. But I also don't remember being asked about this at any point.

Daishiman 5y ago
Apple is surely against tracking and in favor of opt-ins for privacy... as long as it's the competitors' products and not its own.
- samatman 5y ago
  I don't really think either of those things apply here, although the implementation is pretty crucial. AirTags have some protections against using them to track people, and the AirTag network doesn't appear to leak any private information. That last part could be completely wrong, for all we know: it relies on the software to be correct. The whole point of the gizmo is to "track", and I struggle to come up with an improvement to their solution to allowing users to track things but not stalk people. This is being automatically enrolled in some kind of public good, where "public" is the Apple ecosystem. Is that bad? I mean, I don't mind, but offering an opt-out seems... polite, at least?
  - daemoon 5y ago
    It does let you to opt-out.
  - petepete 5y ago
    Stalking people who don't use iOS is fine though. It's a good thing they're not as important.

bityard 5y ago

Back in the early 2000s when hand-held GPS receivers/loggers started becoming relatively cheap, some white-hat hackers tried sending them through the mail to see how the postal system worked and produced several articles and presentations on the results. It turned out the USPS took a very dim view of this kind of thing. I can't find any of this research now, of course, because all the search engines want to sell me tracking devices and package tracking services.

dkdbejwi383 5y ago
If you (or anyone) manages to find it, I’d appreciate a link, sounds like a good read
- coolspot 5y ago
  https://webmonkeyuk.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/putting-a-gps-tracker-in-the-mail/ https://webmonkeyuk.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/putting-a-gps-t...
  - orhmeh09 5y ago
    This is from 2012 and it concerns the UK mail system, not USPS.
irae 5y ago
Sigh. SEO and other kinds of "almost search spam" has being reducing the utility to search for certain phrases impossible. It's about time search engines create a filter like -selling:shirts so it can go back to working as it should.
bob1029 5y ago
Maybe this is what you were thinking of? https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/hacker-sends-this-through-the-mail-to-record-a-video-of-the-process/ https://hackaday.com/2013/04/10/hacker-sends-this-through-th... https://web.archive.org/web/20130411184048/http://www.rubenvandervleuten.com/AtoB.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130411184048/http://www.rubenv...
5y ago

fallat 5y ago

Is this possible with other tag systems? Seems like a great way to send something with "better tracking" which is expensive.

klausjensen 5y ago
Not really. The reason this works so well is the massive amount of IOS devices participating. I have some Tile-trackers (which I think used to be the biggest player in this space - until Apple came along), and while they are OK, the number of devices tracking them is abysmal compared to the Airtags.
andrewmunsell 5y ago
I bought my first Tile a couple years ago: Someone had their rental car broken into, and their stuff stolen. He had a Tile on his keys, and noticed that he got a ping outside of SLU in Seattle, so he posted in the /r/seattle subreddit. I happened to be working there at the time, so I messaged him and went for a walk. It took me about 30 min to find his keys (his bag was gone, they must have dumped it elsewhere) in a bush, which I was able to mail back to him. So, I bought a couple Tiles since that was proof to me that it worked. But, looking back, over the day or so it was there, he only got two pings to my recollection: one person that walked by (and caused him to post to Reddit), and me once I found it. AirTag's network is just so much bigger. I'm pretty convinced you would get at most a single ping if you mailed a Tile somewhere. I also use a Tile in my snowboard bag. I was always able to confirm the bag made it on the plane because my phone would connect through the floor of the plane into the cargo hold, but I'd be very lucky if I got a ping when the bag was in the baggage belt system underneath the airport. Tile was a great idea and worked well if you had other Tile users nearby. It's not really their fault the network is so small, it's a hard problem to solve to seed that network unless you happen to own a billion devices...
- gord288 5y ago
  Tile just announced they’re partnering with Amazon so that Tile devices will participate in their ‘Sidewalk’ network. This will help them compete with the network of Apple’s billion+ ‘Find My’ devices. https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/07/tile-teams-with-amazon-in-attempt-to-compete-with-apples-airtag-and-formidable-find-my-network/ https://macdailynews.com/2021/05/07/tile-teams-with-amazon-i...

underseacables 5y ago

Is there any way to opt out of the AirTag network?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ocdtrekkie 5y ago
Yeah, Find My is an app that needs your location services to work. ...If your Location Services is off, or your Find My app doesn't have permission to access Location Services, it shouldn't be able to report your device (nor other peoples' devices) location to Apple.
fastball 5y ago
Don't enable "Find My iPhone" when setting up your phone.
ezfe 5y ago
There is a switch in Find my iPhone location settings for the "Find My network" that presumably opts you out of this.
- underseacables 5y ago
  They does seem to do the trick. I’m ok with using a service like that to find a phone, but to utilize the devices of others (while a noble idea) creeps too far into the scary for me.

spaceywilly 5y ago

"The point of these alerts is to let people know if they’re being tracked surreptitiously by someone who placed an AirTag in their bag, their pocket, or their car. Three days is already much too long, but the fact that no alerts are occurring after four days is disturbing." As I understand this feature monitors the signal strength of nearby airtags to identify ones that are travelling with you. In this case, if the person left it on a table at their house, they would constantly be moving in and out of range, so it's not moving with them. "It’s also not clear how often AirTag locations update. I gave my partner an AirTag last week for her to take when she went on an errand, driving about 20 miles from home. Since she has an iPhone, I expected to see frequent updates in the Find My app, but that wasn’t the case." Again, this is probably by design. If it worked as the author expected and gave you frequent updates, it could easily be used to track an unsuspecting person's location. This design seems much better. It still will give you enough information to locate your lost item, but it is not enough to track down the location of a single iPhone user.

avianlyric 5y ago
> "It’s also not clear how often AirTag locations update. I gave my partner an AirTag last week for her to take when she went on an errand, driving about 20 miles from home. Since she has an iPhone, I expected to see frequent updates in the Find My app, but that wasn’t the case." This is almost certainly a product of iOS battery management. Presumably there was only one iPhone in range during the drive (GF’s). If the iPhone isn’t plugged in, then it generally doesn’t update its precise location unless it detect “substantial movement”, which is normally triggered by thing like switching cell tower. Net result is the AirTags location only get updated when the nearby iPhone thinks it’s power efficient to do so.

doublerabbit 5y ago

How long until they tag these to our ears and assign us a personal number? With Elon's offer of servitude[1] on Mars and these, we may encounter George Oswells 1984 pretty soon. Airtags, just another piece of e-waste to poison the planet. [1] https://twitter.com/PicklePunchD/status/1217991463503446016 https://twitter.com/PicklePunchD/status/1217991463503446016 How long until Apple decides to discontinue the tags on their current generation of devices forcing you to upgrade?

Odenwaelder 5y ago
I, for one, don't like losing my keys or umbrella and really like AirTags.
- doublerabbit 5y ago
  I've not-often lost my keys nor umbrella, do you live in a castle? How often do you loose those things? And now your tagging your items just for apple to see besides no one has answered how does that justify the e-waste these tags produces? Seeing as I've been rated-limited. > Not sure what you mean there, but Apple doesn't get to know where anything is. To say Apple doesn't get to see any information, pfft. I trust them as much as any thief. Can you prove this? > Something something covid vaccines and 5G base stations Not at all. I'm hoping to get my covid vaccine, have you?
  - mehphp 5y ago
    Do you have a phone, a computer or even a relatively new car? I presume you do. You are already being tracked.
    - doublerabbit 5y ago
      Totally yeah, no car though. I walk in to a shop and I'm already tagged. I walk in to the streets, I'm tagged. There's no hiding from surveillance. But now to allow a tag report back where your X is located is ridiculous. Why you want to submit to a heat map of your objects, and what you do with them, I don't know. Call me cynical. I pity the people who feel its a fantastic toy when normally it's the same people criticizing about X FANG company thing. Yet they go and buy the recent crud they release. Talk about hypocritical.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I am very unhappy about this new tracking service. Scenario: sinister stalker (government agent, for example) attaches an airtag to my car. All iPhone users in the area will be happily reporting tag location and helping stalker in his malicious designs. How do I protect myself against this, if I am an Android user?

mvanaltvorst 5y ago
<100$ GPS car trackers that use cellular and are arguably better for tracking cars already exist.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  They are much more expensive and require way more power, so they can't track you for a year without recharging. Also, they need to transmit data using cellular network, which also drains a lot of power. The problem is that this new service makes such snooping very casual.
  - fastball 5y ago
    "Casual stalker" sounds like an oxymoron to me.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      That may change, as people realize how easy it is to track others. Will there be stories of guys who 'accidentally' leave their keys/backpack/jacket in the car of some girl who gave them a ride home from a party? I wouldn't be surprised if within a year we start seeing devices that can scan for nearby Airtags/Tiles/etc. so you can see if there's anything in your car before you head home.
      - spideymans 5y ago
        >Will there be stories of guys who 'accidentally' leave their keys/backpack/jacket in the car of some girl who gave them a ride home from a party? Damn, that is a good point. It'll be very difficult to prove that anyone stalking using AirTags had malicious/illegal intent. Far harder than, say, a purpose-built GPS tracker.

the_arun 5y ago

AirTag or similar tool could be a great way to track important packages we mail. Courier services could use this by default & provide better tracking data for their customers. I recently mailed a document to India & I have no clue where it is.

hughrr 5y ago
You can buy devices for this purpose already: https://tive.co/tive-solo-5g/ https://tive.co/tive-solo-5g/
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  To get started, they say “Request a Trial”. You know it’s going to be pricy. And difficult to resell once you’re done.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    I'm gonna go with "not resellable". It's a 99% certainty that the device is backed by a SaaS backend with a monthly subscription per device. You won't be owning the device at any point.
Scoundreller 5y ago
I’m looking forward to a world where the iPhone mesh net lets me move any amount of data from place to place without needing any long-range wired or wireless network link, just apple phones moving around. We largely go the same places every day, and apple could figure out how to send a message or request for a song/movie/file/update and it just appears a few hours or couple days later. Like a transparent sneakernet that uses onion routing. We have some satellite-internet fed remote areas in Canada, and how to get your phone updated without a local IX means everyone chews through data just for system updates. They do have daily or weekly flights however. Loading up an SD card for the trips back and forth could work, but complicated. When MS released the Zune with wifi, I hoped I could sit in an airport and “borrow” songs from other users/hosters, but I don’t think it worked that way. Worldwide, high-latency LAN. For basically free by doing what we already do.

bosswipe 5y ago

As an Android user I hate AirTags because it will reduce the power of Tile's cross-platform finding network making it less likely that my tiles will be found. This means that Google should fight back by integrating a finding network into Android OS. It's more anti-competitive platform lock-in.

kube-system 5y ago
I had Tile on some lost luggage recently. Even though Tile had the biggest network, it still wasn't enough. My luggage visited a few large international airports without a single ping. It really seems that OS integration is the only way to get enough scale.
- temp667 5y ago
  Same experience - I also went all in on tile - it really does not have the density of reporting and I'm also pretty sure lacks privacy protections apple has.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    and none of the anti stalking measures.
fastball 5y ago
Have you actually used the tile network to successfully recover something? I was big on tile a few years ago, but they didn't help me find two things that were lost. Just not enough of a network. I'm hopeful AirTags will work better.
acomjean 5y ago
Its a network effect. Its basically the dominant players become more dominant. It makes apples phone's more useful, and Apple is unlikely to let any competitors use they're phone for a similar service, especially not by default. If you have an iOS device, you're tracking all these airtags around you physically for Apple. Apple's not paying you for that service. It probably uses a little battery life, but all these individual device make the network great. But if you bought an airtag that's a great thing.

madjam002 5y ago

Does anyone think in the future we’ll see DIY AirTag alternatives that can participate in the Find My network? They’re just BLE beacons right?

maxwell 5y ago
https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack#how-does-apples-find-my-network-work https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack#how-does-apples-f...
- UncleEntity 5y ago
  I was under the impression that airtags used some kind of Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum so there was no chance to emulate one without some dedicated hardware but that link seems to say otherwise. Now there's hope that with a little hacking the iBeacon emulator I coded up to run on my laptop can participate on the Find My network, sweet.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ChuckMcM 5y ago

Time to tape these things to packages on the doorstep to see where the thieves take them.

paxys 5y ago
So now along with an expensive package they also get an expensive airtag for free
Etheryte 5y ago
As seen in the glitter bomb experiment [0], many package thieves simply drive a few blocks, open the package and then toss whatever isn't valuable. Not that likely it will give you much useful to go on. [0] https://youtu.be/xoxhDk-hwuo https://youtu.be/xoxhDk-hwuo
- majormunky 5y ago
  So that experiment ended up being people that knew about the device, in the description of your linked video he explains what happened.
  - Etheryte 5y ago
    That's not an accurate statement of what happened at all. Here's an outtake from the description: > To compensate [people whose houses I left the package at] for their time and willingness to risk putting a package on their porch I offered financial compensation for any successful recoveries of the package. [...] I've since confirmed in these two cases, the “thieves" were actually acquaintances of the person helping me. I have since removed those reactions from the original video. All of the content in the video right now is legitimate and the video's author was not aware some of the original recordings were fake.
mobilemidget 5y ago
Mark Rober made some nice YouTube/device for those porch pirates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4T_LlK1VE4

anonAndOn 5y ago

Stunning. Apple has built a surveillance system that no government in the world could ever afford. Despots, dictators and duly elected presidents around the world are rejoicing at how cheap and easy it is to keep tabs on your political enemies, opposition leaders and those meddlesome human rights campaigners. Put a small tag on their cars, their briefcases, their kids' lunchboxes and just watch where the little tags go. Got a secret meeting with your fellow revolutionaries? Better hope nobody with an iPhone passed nearby on the trip to, from and during the meeting.

jaywalk 5y ago
Yep, AirTag has definitely enabled all of that. No other, better options exist, AirTag is the first way for the baddies to covertly track people. Oh, unless the people they want to track also have an iPhone, because then they'll get alerted to the tracking. Damn!
- anonAndOn 5y ago
  Is there another tiny tag that automatically pairs with a billion mobile listening stations? If so, where can I buy it?
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    You can get a GPS device that automatically pairs with satellite in the sky, regardless of the devices around it. Are you worried about someone putting a GPS device in your bag?
    - angry_octet 5y ago
      GPS trackers don't work well inside, they are large due to battery requirements, and are easily jammed. They are really only practical for tracking vehicles, where they can be wired in or use a large battery. It is significantly incriminatory if you are found to be using one.
      - 5y ago

fastball 5y ago

I honestly don't understand the concern about being stalked at all. Ya'll honestly think an AirTag is the best way for a stalker to track you?

katbyte 5y ago
I think most people haven't considered stalking like that and don't realize how many cheap and small devices are out there already.
martini333 5y ago
best way? maybe not. very easy and cheap; yes
- fastball 5y ago
  I don't see how there could be much overlap in the Venn diagram of "people that are determined to stalk you" and "people that can't afford a $30 GPS tracker but can afford a $30 AirTag (even though they apparently own an iPhone)".
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Scary thing is the cheaper trackers already exist: https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-Tracking/dp/B07N4DHFZM https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-... But the ease of use of AirTags is undeniable.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Lol, I thought they were sticking to "show legitimate non-illegal uses" until the last picture says "Easily mounts under car with included magnet" (not technically illegal if it's your own car but the use case for that is not universal).

francoisp 5y ago

I wonder if this is legal. I know Apple asks you to disable location tracking when returning devices to them for warranty. This could be abused by terrorists to use the postman nefariously...

ezfe 5y ago
They don't ask you to disable it for the mail, they ask you because they can't recycle it if it's locked out.
theshrike79 5y ago
You do know you can mail an Android phone in the mail too and track the exact location?

eplanit 5y ago

It seems creepy to me, especially given how many legitimate reasons there are now to distrust Big Tech. It seems like an abusive husband can plant a tag on his wife (or her car, or purse, ...) and track her quite effectively. Also, even without that, doesn't it just give Apple even more insight as to how you live your life? This seems like one of those 'features' where 20% of the benefit is for the end-user, but the gold mine 80% is in the long-tail that goes to the company.

barbegal 5y ago

If you have an existing Bluetooth device like a Tile then you can reprogram it to emulate an AirTag and Apple users will help you track it https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22313461/openhaystack-apple-find-my-network-diy-airtags https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22313461/openhaystack-appl... The worrying part is this could be combined with countermeasures to prevent the anti stalking measure from working and even prevent it being discovered by a bug detector. Thankfully Apple has a lot of visibility of the system so presumably would be able to track down bad actors and aid law enforcement.

jfoster 5y ago
It's not clear to me that Apple are always willing to work with law enforcement, even when their customers are indisputably criminal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

boplicity 5y ago

>anyone who is in the presence of an AirTag that has been separated from its owner for three days will get an alert on their iPhone That sounds exactly like extortion. "Buy an iPhone, or we won't tell you whether people are tracking your every movement." This is screaming for real regulation. Yikes.

flowerlad 5y ago
When moved, any AirTag separated for a period of time from the person who registered it will make a sound to alert those nearby. If you find an AirTag after hearing it make a sound, you can use any device that has NFC, such as an iPhone or Android phone, to see if its owner marked it as lost and help return it. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227
- VonGallifrey 5y ago
  Unless a nefarious person opened the AirTag and removed the speaker, but that can't happen and there aren't any videos of how to do this on YouTube.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    A truly nefarious person has dozens of other ways of tracking you. Not being able to do it with an AirTag is the least of their worries.

kumarharsh 5y ago

Back in the days, I used to watch Spiderman cartoons, and was amazed by the small trackers Spidey put on people he needed to track, and got the location in real time. I wanted to see something like that someday. This AirTag does seem very nice in that respect. But then I realize what a gigantic privacy nightmare this can be for a large portion of our population. Stalkers can put a tracker on you, and you'll never get notified if you don't have an iPhone? What if the user doesn't even have a smartphone? How does Apple think they'll handle this scenario? Can it even be handled?

yoz-y 5y ago
The tag will beep after 3 days, then you can tap it with any nfc enabled phone to get the owners contact information, or more probably, throw it in the trash.
- judge2020 5y ago
  I wonder how many times this will trigger for dump truck drivers if they're thrown in the trash...
- isignal 5y ago
  Someone will probably figure out a way to disable the speaker.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> What if the user doesn't even have a smartphone? How real is this concern anymore?
- kumarharsh 5y ago
  KaiOS is the second most popular OS in India - more popular than iOS :)

artur_makly 5y ago

damn. Apparently its not advised for your dog-tracking: https://www.imore.com/why-doesnt-apple-want-you-track-your-dog-airtag https://www.imore.com/why-doesnt-apple-want-you-track-your-d...

barbazoo 5y ago
> In short, while you can put an AirTag on your dog or cat, Apple does not encourage it to cover its own butt in case of legal action. I don't get the "not advised" part from that page. It just sounds like they're just not advertising this articular use case.

ta1234567890 5y ago

One thing that is inconvenient about Apple’s AirTags is that you can’t share them with other people. So for example, if a husband/wife share car keys, and the car keys have the wife’s AirTag, but then she misplaces her purse with both her phone and keys, the husband won’t be able to locate them. Another scenario is if one of them wants to put an AirTag on their phone, so that when they can’t find it, the other person can help them locate it. Anyway, I’m sure there are lots of situations in which it would be helpful for multiple people to be able to locate the same AirTag, yet this is not currently possible.

ec109685 5y ago
Interesting they allow you to find each other’s devices if you have shared family iCloud but not AirTags?

megablast 5y ago

What an awful way to show the data. Put it all on one map. Come on.

mrcartmenez 5y ago

Why is this person calling post mail? So confused

alistairSH 5y ago
I imagine because he's an American living in England.

m3kw9 5y ago

You don’t want the air tag to alert you if it’s stationary because your spouse could be also near the tag at home while you travelled for work.

deleted 5y ago

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zapdrive 5y ago

So... If a person does not have an iOS device, and someone plants this on them/their car? They could be tracked 24/7 and will have absolutely no idea, since "a tag is traveling with you" alert is only on iOS devices. How is this not a huge privacy concern?

theshrike79 5y ago
They could be tracked for exactly three days. Then the tag would start beeping. (This setting can be adjusted by Apple, it's not an on-device setting) You do know that this exact same tracking can be done with a dozen other devices, which are not made by Apple? If you're tracking a car, AirTags are pretty much the shittiest option and not even the cheapest. You can slap a $20 tracker with a magnet under the fender while walking past and get 1 meter realtime tracking.
- zapdrive 5y ago
  3 days is long enough. Also, as others have pointed, although other options existed, Apple has made it easier to use and more accessible.

kuratkull 5y ago

The mailman must get a lot of these "A Tag is following you" during a typical workday.

bngybmgrglflps 5y ago

I think an apt analogy is Google Glass. It went without saying they didn't invent surreptitious video recording. This didn't prevent _overwhelming outcry_ over legitimate privacy concerns. The only difference I can see here is Apple's halo effect. Possible action items: - I will happily submit my Android location data to Apple to find out if I'm being tracked by an AirTag. Where's the API? (I realize this compromises the "theft prevention" use case. That's an unfortunate collision of interests. Maybe sell a Pro version, comparable to LoJack. If I understood correctly, "3 days since home" is too much window anyway.) - Let me use an iPhone with Find My disabled to receive stalker alerts, without participating in the mesh (read: sending the tag's location). Can someone confirm whether this is already how it works? As I see it, these are table stakes. The optics are not my problem: you're selling a $30 private investigator with no legal oversight. Doubt me? Volunteer at a women's shelter.

SilverRed 5y ago
>I will happily submit my Android location data to Apple to find out if I'm being tracked by an AirTag. No need. Your android device can already pick up the airtag beacons. Google (perhaps with Apples help) _need_ to get safety alerts working cross platform ASAP. Someone and likely many people are going to be hurt by this tech so this needs to be done, and hopefully before regulators kill the whole idea of tracker tags.

Ice_cream_suit 5y ago

I can imagine hostile state actors sending AirTags into the US military mail system to map relationships between people / entities. I hope that the military have instituted techniques to avoid this. Unfortunately, it might need millions of Faraday cages or banning Apple equipment from military installations.

theshrike79 5y ago
Seriously? THIS is the scenario you came up with? How does your mind work, really?

teekert 5y ago

Is there an Android app for AirTags? Would be nice, then I could drop one in the car and have a cool visual of where the car went, even when my wife drives it with her Pocophone. Edit: You can apparently play a role in returning a lost AirTag [0]. But it would be nice if there was an app. Maybe even a more open ecosystem where the network could be leveraged. It has been tried before but failed, but Apple has a nice change here because they can force iDevices to play along (and I don't mind for once, I feel they do it the right way, with a focus on privacy). [0] https://www.cnet.com/how-to/2-ways-you-can-use-apple-airtag-with-an-android-phone/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/2-ways-you-can-use-apple-airtag-...

ifdefdebug 5y ago

If somebody tags me with such device and I find out, I wonder if I then can successfully sue Apple for transmitting my location without my consent (I am in Europe).

h0nd 5y ago

I still cant stop thinking about the potential of this solution not limited to Apple/iOS devices, such as an open protocol.

andreagrandi 5y ago

I can't find anywhere a simple answer to this use case: if I leave an Airtag in a bag, at home, and I leave for 1 week (without the bag): 1) will the tag start ringing? 2) Will my next door neighbour (who has an iPhone and I can often find it in my Airplay bluetooth range) receive a notification that someone is trying to track him? 3) Is my neighbour able to make my Airtag ring when I'm at home (and maybe sleeping) ? Thanks