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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

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.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    you can get ones that can last 3-4 weeds and cost about the same and unlike airtags there are no anti stalking measures, not to mention tile is exactly the same. Snooping was already very easy and casual and all airtags are doing is making people realize it and of all the trackers the only ones with any sort of anti stalking.
    - darkarmani 5y ago
      > Snooping was already very easy and casual and all airtags are doing is making people realize it So they are making the problem much worse? That's not really a defense.
      - sneak 5y ago
        More visible, not worse. Arguably better, due to illuminating the existing problem.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  <$30 Bluetooth low-energy trackers (eg Tile, TrackR, Cube) that don't use cellular and last for years on coin cells also exist. Obviously, without GPS and without cellular they rely on being near someone with a smartphone in the crowdshared location system. I think Tile (prior to AirTag) was the biggest, they've got around 10 million sold, probably on the order of 1 million active users once you discount people who own multiple units, or replacements of previously sold Tiles, etc. As a Tile user, this was sufficient for my needs. If I lost my Tile in a public place, something like 1 in 300 people had the app and I'd have decent odds of getting an update in a couple days. I inadvertently left my bag in a coworker's car once, they don't have a Tile but it pinged a couple times during their commute as they passed other cars with Tile owners. But neither they nor their neighbors had Tiles, so it didn't give their home address. Tile doesn't make a big deal out of mitigating car-tracking or stalking abuses of its products, because it's not really big enough to be a problem. Now, though, there are something like 120 million iPhone users. I don't know how many choose to opt out of the default "Find My" setting, I'd guess that both that population and the population of people who even know it exists are both negligible, so I assume something like 150 in every 300 people are in Apple's crowdsourced location service. Speaking of populations that may or may not know something exists: lots of people who don't know about and wouldn't buy a GPS car tracker are likely to end up with an Airtag on their keychain. By introducing the product, Apple is inviting the idea "what if I dropped that in someone's bag" to come across a hundred million minds. Scale matters. At Apple volumes, mitigations like this are smart and will likely prevent crimes from occurring. At Tile's volume, it doesn't matter that much. I'm sure Tile (or a niche manufacturer of GPS fleet trackers) would love to have that problem, but they simply don't.
valine 5y ago
The airtag will start making sound after being separated from its owner for 3 days. That at least gives you the opportunity to locate and disable the airtag.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  I am pretty sure the beeper can be easily disabled.
  - randyrand 5y ago
    Not sure why he's downvoted. It can be. I did it myself in 3 minutes using only a knife.
- laurowyn 5y ago
  Good job nobody has posted a teardown of the device, with detailed notes on how to open it without damage and where the speaker is mounted. Otherwise anybody could prevent their airtags from beeping and alerting their stalking targets that they're being tracked.
  - fastball 5y ago
    If you're going to go to that much trouble, at that point it would be easier to use one of the countless pre-existing GPS trackers on the market[1] (which don't have such privacy-aware features) to stalk a victim. [1] https://www.amazon.com/GPS-Trackers/b?node=617650011 https://www.amazon.com/GPS-Trackers/b?node=617650011
    - randyrand 5y ago
      I took the speaker out of the one I keep in my street parked motorcycle. I don't need to speaker functionality for that. It's only for theft. Took all of 3 minutes. Super convenient.
    - SilverRed 5y ago
      Those cost more and have a short battery life. For a government agency this might not be an issue (hook it up to the car battery). But for a casual malicious user, airtags open up whole new worlds of abuse.
paulgerhardt 5y ago
The quickest solution would be to stop using Android. Any cellular device will report its location to the nearest cell tower. This data is sold to private parties and available to query nominally by law enforcement only but really to any bidder willing to pay Zumigo or Microbilt a fairly reasonable fee. Further that location is in realtime and contains historical breadcrumbs. The periodic pings from your device not masking it's MAC address by attempting to query nearby wifi points, your bluetooth sending out rotating EID's are useful for in store tracking of customers but worse than running footage through collected CCTV footage. Likewise the wifi/bluetooth breadcrumbs are worse data than the LTE pings we're already getting.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  To buy my phone location data the perpetrator needs to know my phone number firsr, which can be not that easy. Ok. Another scenario. A serial rapist sees a girl he likes at the shopping mall, exiting her car. He attaches an AirTag to the car, and in a few short hours he knows where she lives. Of course, he could do it with GPS tracker, but such tracker needs to transmit data, and cellular connection is rarely anonymous, creating risks for the perpetrator. So this wonderful technology makes all sorts of stalking much more accessible.
  - lgats 5y ago
    This same scenario exists with Tile Trackers.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      At least not every iPhone reports Tiles to base.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Or they could just do it the old fashioned way and just follow them in their car. Or just tape a burner android phone to the car. Or tape a GPS with cellular tracker using a burner SIM to the car. Cellular connections are more than anonymous enough in most countries, and its not like a perpetrator in you scenario is gonna be leaving the device on the car for an extend period of time. At the end of the day stalking someone who isn’t actively defending again being stalked is pretty trivial. AirTags don’t really change the status-quo that much. They’ve just shone a light on an existing issue.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
I’m sure you’ll agree that this is an inadequate provision, but it will start beeping after three days. I can’t really think of a solution to this beyond Apple and Google working together.
- fastball 5y ago
  The solution for people that are worried about this is to take a freaking chill pill. Anyone that cares can already easily track/stalk you.
  - angry_octet 5y ago
    This is the all too common response of someone who has never experienced stalking or harassment. Women commonly have these experiences. The AirTag is revolutionary: - Mesh network (no cellular reqd) - Very long battery life - Small - Deniable, unsuspicious - Great user interface Hundreds of thousands of wives/girlfriends/etc will be tracked by these things within months.
- barbegal 5y ago
  It won't start beeping if you open the tag up and disable the speaker. The beeping is not an anti stalking measure.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  >I can’t really think of a solution to this beyond Apple and Google working together. This is not unreasonable to expect. They did it to build the contact tracing service. When it comes to safety, profits and walled gardens need to come second.
katbyte 5y ago
well a government agent would just attach a real tracking device with cellular that does live realtime updates lol - and anyone who wants to track someone has far better options then airtags: https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-Tracking/dp/B07N4DHFZM https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-... or https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-Tracking/dp/B07N4DHFZM https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-... these have existed for a long time at reasonable prices and none of the have the anti stalking measures airtags do.
- angry_octet 5y ago
  Well -- lol -- even Government Agents are -- lol -- subject to battery power limitations. lol
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Airtag can track a car, and switching car in Russia is far more difficult than leaving phone at home. Also, given how openly criminal russian government is these days, airtags can give them plausible deniability. Like, anyone could have forgotten an airtag in your back seat. With great battery life and virtial anonymity, it is a godsend for covert and unsuspicious surveillance and all kinds of crime. Met some rich guy? Easily find out where he lives and kidnap his kids for ransom. I can't stress enough how casual this will get.
jhallenworld 5y ago
There are already Android apps to detect them: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dylan.airtag.detector https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dylan.airt...
IdiocyInAction 5y ago
You do know that GPS-based trackers (which are more than good enough for cars) have been available on Aliexpress for years?
swiley 5y ago
Find the firmware file for the bluetooth radio and delete it. Android will make this hard since it's an "immutable OS" and the authors don't want it's "dumb users" breaking things.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  What are you on about. This has nothing to do with Android other than the fact that android users are unable to get safety alerts. The problem is that someone can plant a tag on an android user and other passing ios users will report the location back.

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.
- katbyte 5y ago
  you can get ones that can last 3-4 weeds and cost about the same and unlike airtags there are no anti stalking measures, not to mention tile is exactly the same. Snooping was already very easy and casual and all airtags are doing is making people realize it and of all the trackers the only ones with any sort of anti stalking.
  - darkarmani 5y ago
    > Snooping was already very easy and casual and all airtags are doing is making people realize it So they are making the problem much worse? That's not really a defense.
    - sneak 5y ago
      More visible, not worse. Arguably better, due to illuminating the existing problem.
LeifCarrotson 5y ago
<$30 Bluetooth low-energy trackers (eg Tile, TrackR, Cube) that don't use cellular and last for years on coin cells also exist. Obviously, without GPS and without cellular they rely on being near someone with a smartphone in the crowdshared location system. I think Tile (prior to AirTag) was the biggest, they've got around 10 million sold, probably on the order of 1 million active users once you discount people who own multiple units, or replacements of previously sold Tiles, etc. As a Tile user, this was sufficient for my needs. If I lost my Tile in a public place, something like 1 in 300 people had the app and I'd have decent odds of getting an update in a couple days. I inadvertently left my bag in a coworker's car once, they don't have a Tile but it pinged a couple times during their commute as they passed other cars with Tile owners. But neither they nor their neighbors had Tiles, so it didn't give their home address. Tile doesn't make a big deal out of mitigating car-tracking or stalking abuses of its products, because it's not really big enough to be a problem. Now, though, there are something like 120 million iPhone users. I don't know how many choose to opt out of the default "Find My" setting, I'd guess that both that population and the population of people who even know it exists are both negligible, so I assume something like 150 in every 300 people are in Apple's crowdsourced location service. Speaking of populations that may or may not know something exists: lots of people who don't know about and wouldn't buy a GPS car tracker are likely to end up with an Airtag on their keychain. By introducing the product, Apple is inviting the idea "what if I dropped that in someone's bag" to come across a hundred million minds. Scale matters. At Apple volumes, mitigations like this are smart and will likely prevent crimes from occurring. At Tile's volume, it doesn't matter that much. I'm sure Tile (or a niche manufacturer of GPS fleet trackers) would love to have that problem, but they simply don't.

valine 5y ago

The airtag will start making sound after being separated from its owner for 3 days. That at least gives you the opportunity to locate and disable the airtag.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I am pretty sure the beeper can be easily disabled.
- randyrand 5y ago
  Not sure why he's downvoted. It can be. I did it myself in 3 minutes using only a knife.
laurowyn 5y ago
Good job nobody has posted a teardown of the device, with detailed notes on how to open it without damage and where the speaker is mounted. Otherwise anybody could prevent their airtags from beeping and alerting their stalking targets that they're being tracked.
- fastball 5y ago
  If you're going to go to that much trouble, at that point it would be easier to use one of the countless pre-existing GPS trackers on the market[1] (which don't have such privacy-aware features) to stalk a victim. [1] https://www.amazon.com/GPS-Trackers/b?node=617650011 https://www.amazon.com/GPS-Trackers/b?node=617650011
  - randyrand 5y ago
    I took the speaker out of the one I keep in my street parked motorcycle. I don't need to speaker functionality for that. It's only for theft. Took all of 3 minutes. Super convenient.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Those cost more and have a short battery life. For a government agency this might not be an issue (hook it up to the car battery). But for a casual malicious user, airtags open up whole new worlds of abuse.

paulgerhardt 5y ago

The quickest solution would be to stop using Android. Any cellular device will report its location to the nearest cell tower. This data is sold to private parties and available to query nominally by law enforcement only but really to any bidder willing to pay Zumigo or Microbilt a fairly reasonable fee. Further that location is in realtime and contains historical breadcrumbs. The periodic pings from your device not masking it's MAC address by attempting to query nearby wifi points, your bluetooth sending out rotating EID's are useful for in store tracking of customers but worse than running footage through collected CCTV footage. Likewise the wifi/bluetooth breadcrumbs are worse data than the LTE pings we're already getting.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
To buy my phone location data the perpetrator needs to know my phone number firsr, which can be not that easy. Ok. Another scenario. A serial rapist sees a girl he likes at the shopping mall, exiting her car. He attaches an AirTag to the car, and in a few short hours he knows where she lives. Of course, he could do it with GPS tracker, but such tracker needs to transmit data, and cellular connection is rarely anonymous, creating risks for the perpetrator. So this wonderful technology makes all sorts of stalking much more accessible.
- lgats 5y ago
  This same scenario exists with Tile Trackers.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    At least not every iPhone reports Tiles to base.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Or they could just do it the old fashioned way and just follow them in their car. Or just tape a burner android phone to the car. Or tape a GPS with cellular tracker using a burner SIM to the car. Cellular connections are more than anonymous enough in most countries, and its not like a perpetrator in you scenario is gonna be leaving the device on the car for an extend period of time. At the end of the day stalking someone who isn’t actively defending again being stalked is pretty trivial. AirTags don’t really change the status-quo that much. They’ve just shone a light on an existing issue.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

I’m sure you’ll agree that this is an inadequate provision, but it will start beeping after three days. I can’t really think of a solution to this beyond Apple and Google working together.

fastball 5y ago
The solution for people that are worried about this is to take a freaking chill pill. Anyone that cares can already easily track/stalk you.
- angry_octet 5y ago
  This is the all too common response of someone who has never experienced stalking or harassment. Women commonly have these experiences. The AirTag is revolutionary: - Mesh network (no cellular reqd) - Very long battery life - Small - Deniable, unsuspicious - Great user interface Hundreds of thousands of wives/girlfriends/etc will be tracked by these things within months.
barbegal 5y ago
It won't start beeping if you open the tag up and disable the speaker. The beeping is not an anti stalking measure.
SilverRed 5y ago
>I can’t really think of a solution to this beyond Apple and Google working together. This is not unreasonable to expect. They did it to build the contact tracing service. When it comes to safety, profits and walled gardens need to come second.

katbyte 5y ago

well a government agent would just attach a real tracking device with cellular that does live realtime updates lol - and anyone who wants to track someone has far better options then airtags: https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-Tracking/dp/B07N4DHFZM https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-... or https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-Tracking/dp/B07N4DHFZM https://www.amazon.ca/Real-time-Worldwide-Coverage-Portable-... these have existed for a long time at reasonable prices and none of the have the anti stalking measures airtags do.

angry_octet 5y ago
Well -- lol -- even Government Agents are -- lol -- subject to battery power limitations. lol
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Airtag can track a car, and switching car in Russia is far more difficult than leaving phone at home. Also, given how openly criminal russian government is these days, airtags can give them plausible deniability. Like, anyone could have forgotten an airtag in your back seat. With great battery life and virtial anonymity, it is a godsend for covert and unsuspicious surveillance and all kinds of crime. Met some rich guy? Easily find out where he lives and kidnap his kids for ransom. I can't stress enough how casual this will get.

jhallenworld 5y ago

There are already Android apps to detect them: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dylan.airtag.detector https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dylan.airt...

IdiocyInAction 5y ago

You do know that GPS-based trackers (which are more than good enough for cars) have been available on Aliexpress for years?

swiley 5y ago

Find the firmware file for the bluetooth radio and delete it. Android will make this hard since it's an "immutable OS" and the authors don't want it's "dumb users" breaking things.

SilverRed 5y ago
What are you on about. This has nothing to do with Android other than the fact that android users are unable to get safety alerts. The problem is that someone can plant a tag on an android user and other passing ios users will report the location back.