8 ms·

Apple is convinced my dog is stalking me

86 points by mikece 4y ago

ChrisRR 4y ago
TLDR: Author has an airtag on their dog
- aldarisbm 4y ago
  seriously...
- sybercecurity 4y ago
  It is a weirdly framed feature request. Sounds like they want some way to signal that this third party AirTag is actually "co-owned" or at least the user knows about it and silence (maybe even track).
  - cr3ative 4y ago
    Yes - it would make sense for them to be optionally, per-device, pooled in Family Sharing in my opinion.
- cr3ative 4y ago
  That's a little unfair. The problem is more that families sharing airtags don't have a good option to trust eachothers tags.
  - lsaferite 4y ago
    I think families _do_ have an option and it's listed in the article. The author just didn't want to take that route as it's more merging of accounts than they are comfortable with. I'd frame it more like Apple doesn't support the idea of shared resources except in a family account setting. A good example could be roommates living in a house and sharing a dog. A family account makes no sense here and the systems in place don't support sharing an AirTag for them.
    - cr3ative 4y ago
      Sadly, they do not. I've got the full Family Sharing thing going with Apple, Airtags are notably absent from it.
- dangus 4y ago
  A better way to show the need for a family sharing would be examples like shared car keys, and luggage.
- hungryforcodes 4y ago
  Message: don't get a dog.
cld8483 4y ago
Well that is what dogs do.
yieldcrv 4y ago
This but airpods. The last few months when I go out I get notifications that some airpods are following me. As if someone dropped one in my jacket pocket specifically to follow me around popular bars, as opposed to someone else just going to the same popular local bars. The first time it was screenshot worthy at best. I'm not the demographic to have predatory tactics done towards me, the likelihood was too small. The following times its just a nuisance, a conversation starter for a pickup improv skit.
- _justinfunk 4y ago
  I appreciate the opposite notifications saying "You have left your AirPods behind" while I am listening to my AirPods.
bcherny 4y ago
I recently bought a bunch of AirTags for my family: for our keys, our bike, our luggage. Annoyingly, every AirTag needs to be linked to a single iPhone. Even when everyone belongs to the same Family. AirTags also make annoying sounds every time I grab my keys to go out. They’re still the best UX on the market, but I wish Apple would improve the UX just a bit more. Maybe their policy folks are worried about news stories about people using AirTags to stalk, which is unfortunately a reasonable fear.
- marcosscriven 4y ago
  I definitely think there should be a way to attach tags to a family. Like the original article I use one in my dog. I know it’s not the purported use, but it has and does work for us.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    My dog did a runner a week after we got her, only found her thanks to the AirTag. Despite all the AirTag annoyances, I'll definitely keep using one on the dog.
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    Particularly because there's already shared Apple services mapped to Families. It's very frustrating.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    > I use one in my dog. I tried this but it’s annoying to have to keep feeding it to the dog every other day. We eventually just attached it to her collar.
- Brajeshwar 4y ago
  I believe in the next couple of years, they would have done their extensive research and have the feature like how we got with Photos after years of wait.
marcosscriven 4y ago
For some reason my iPhone has started warning me someone’s iPods are following me. But they are my own iPods as registered in Find My.
the_snooze 4y ago
Given all the edge cases with AirTags (i.e., everything from "dog stalker" to actual stalkers), I get the sense Apple didn't bother to do much adversarial usability testing on these things. They made a thing because it's cool tech, damn everything else, if you don't like it then tough shit.
- madeofpalk 4y ago
  I get the complete opposite impression - they did more of that than others, compromising the product (in one sense) to accomodate for bad actors, resulting in 'bugs' like this.
  - the_snooze 4y ago
    I disagree in that I see bugs like this help bad actors. If users are conditioned to accept false alarms from rather common use cases, then that weakens true alarms about actual stalkers. It's an inherent contradiction in the AirTag's anti-stalking requirements: it needs to be a useful alarm and not go off under "normal" proximity relationships, but most stalkers are people close to the victim to begin with. If I were building a system with such self-defeating requirements, I would take a step back and either roll it out very slowly, or conclude that this is a bad idea completely.
- some_random 4y ago
  I can't imagine you've actually read into the anti-stalking measures they've implemented because it's pretty damn clear to me that they've thought about adversarial usage. You can absolutely disagree with where they drew the lines between safety and usability, but claiming they didn't think about it past "cool tech" is farcical.
fwlr 4y ago
A “Trust this AirTag” option, perhaps requiring the AirTag’s owner’s device to be involved as well, could solve this issue.
- ezfe 4y ago
  This option is available if the AirTag is a family members' AirTag. You can ignore alerts indefinitely under those conditions.
  - cr3ative 4y ago
    It isn’t. You can’t. I would love that to be true.
    - ezfe 4y ago
      Yes, it literally is. Aside from my partners' AirPods which are bugged up (unique to them specifically, not sure...) I've ignored alerts on all her other tags. When you receive the tracking alert, tap it and you will have a few options. One of those options is to ignore alerts. When you tap it, it will ask you whether you want to Pause Tracking Alerts for the day or indefinitely. If you tap indefinitely, you'll stop getting alerts for that item. You can see this referenced on Apple Support [1], but I've done this personally with success. The only devices it doesn't work on are AirPods but it works on my Chipolo wallet card and all my/their AirTags. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227
      - cr3ative 4y ago
        Thank you, this is news to me, and apparently something is stubbornly not working properly in my setup. That "indefinite" option, which I've never seen before but you kindly highlight, should fix this case. Time to... debug a coin.
        ezfe 4y ago
        If you are seeing their name (ie "John's AirTag" or "John's iPhone") then it should work. On the AirPods I mentioned that don't work, no name appears which I suspect is why.
drewg123 4y ago
Speaking of odd "Find My" notifications... Does this happen to anybody else: When I take a flight, I'll put my backpack with my M1 MBP into the overhead. Like clockwork, when I land, I get a notification that I left the laptop behind at the origin airport. This happens when I don't even touch the laptop inflight, so I could not have disabled BT or wifi. What metric is making Apple think the laptop was left behind?
- nonfamous 4y ago
  At a guess: AirTags (and all Apple devices) get their location from nearby iPhones. If nearby passengers turn on Airplane Mode before departure, their phones stick to being located at the departure airport. When they land and turn off Airplane mode, there’s a short window where they broadcast their “current” location (the departure airport) before getting a new GPS signal. That’s what your M1 is picking up when you land.
  - drewg123 4y ago
    Ah, cool. I had thought it was just paired with my phone, and was somehow sad that it could not see it for a while. Your explanation makes more sense.
  - shaunsingh0207 4y ago
    Whenever I get on the subway, right after I exit the train I get a notification that my MacBook's left behind at the train station I boarded at. That makes sense then
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- groot2581 4y ago
  This happens to me on car rides as well. I’ve made my friends pull over so I could check that I indeed packed the backpack with my AirPods.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  I get notifications that my AirPods are 'left behind' at the gym when I'm driving home, even though... I'm wearing them in the car and the case is in my pocket. Yet... the one time I actually forgot the case in my gym locker, and got to the car... nothing. Happens sometimes when I leave the office too; half a mile from the office I get an alert that I've left my AirPods at the office even though - again - I'm wearing them, they're connected to the phone I'm holding which is also with me (and moving) and the case is with me too. This will become a 'boy who cried wolf' situation soon, if it's not already there.
drcongo 4y ago
My AirTags keep notifying me that I've left stuff behind and that it was last seen at my home address. Other times they notify me that something in the same room as me has been left behind 3 streets away.
- ezfe 4y ago
  You can open up the item and edit the locations to ignore. If it already has your home address, you can make the radius bigger.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    I've already got a huge radius around my house, big enough to make the AirTags almost pointless.
- bluetidepro 4y ago
  > My AirTags keep notifying me that I've left stuff behind and that it was last seen at my home address. After the 2nd or 3rd time this happened to me, the notification had an option to turn on like a "okay location" or however they phrased it. This stops that from happening when you lave it at a known/home address. That worked for me. You may have missed it?
bluetidepro 4y ago
> The problem is that the AirTag is registered to my partner’s device. That means that Apple doesn’t recognize my iPhone in connection with the AirTag, seeing the unknown tracker as a threat to my safety. > The notification provides an option to disable the AirTag, which would be helpful to stop an unwanted third-party from knowing your location. That feature renders the AirTag useless, though, so it would no longer be able to track my dog if she did get out. I'm confused. That doesn't make it useless? If you disable the notification on HIS phone, his partner would still get notifications on HER phone as it's link to her account? I'm confused what he means. And if it's not even linked to his account to begin with, how is he even able to track it besides the stalking notification? Something doesn't add up to me.
- tomschlick 4y ago
  The disable isn't a disable of notifications. It disables the airtag from reporting its status as an anti-stalking measure. So it wouldn't work for anyone.
  - bluetidepro 4y ago
    > The disable isn't a disable of notifications. It disables the airtag from reporting its status as an anti-stalking measure. So it wouldn't work for anyone. OHHHH okay, that makes more sense. That was the part of the puzzle that was confusing me. Thanks!
    - ec109685 4y ago
      If you’re in the same icloud family, this isn’t a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897040
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - soco 4y ago
    So I can walk around and disable every airtag in sight? Some important information must be missing here...
bena 4y ago
This is a meta problem with a lot of account-based services. You have someone you share resources with, but not accounts. So they have a dog, they have an AirTag on the dog, they'd both like to know about the tag, but they can't connect the tag to both accounts without making the accounts too intertwined. Like how I can't realistically share my Amazon Prime Video account with my wife because it is also my Amazon everything else account. Which is also an issue with Alexa/Echo. Which is kind of weird. Because this seems like a fairly simple graph. Users and service accounts are nodes and the edges describe which users have access to which service accounts. So Apple needs a user account for her, a user account for her husband, and then an AirTag service account they can both connect to. But instead, AirTags are a part of her husband's user account.
- oakesm9 4y ago
  A bit off topic, but with your Amazon account you can create an "Amazon Household" and share any prime benefits you have with another adult[0]. You both still keep separate accounts wiht separate logins, but you'll both get the benefit of a single Prime account. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeId%3DGYLAACCNR8G3VVRM https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeI...
  - sib 4y ago
    An Amazon Household requires sharing payment method. So it's not quite a clean "keep separate accounts" solution.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dokem 4y ago
Is there any reason to believe that air tags actually enables or encourages otherwise non-stalkers into stalking? I'm not really inclined to believe so. Stalking isn't difficult or technically challenging thing to do. If you can get the chip on them then you can just follow them home and know where they live. Then you can stalk them whenever you want. The airtag maybe makes it more convenient but I don't think convenience is what dissuades non-stalkers. I can see more insecure people tracking their partner but there's already many other ways to do so. I don't really think this is an issue.
- kyleee 4y ago
  I tend to agree; I think Apple’s efforts are mostly PR to avoid low quality media outlets ex. vice, etc. from being able to write AirTag stalking articles
kybernetyk 4y ago
It's a shame you can't share one air tag between multiple people. Like: car keys. Why can't me and my wife have access to the one air tag attached to our family car's keys? Why is this something someone at Apple hadn't thought of?
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  I bet they did but it was a too big can of worms. Did you forgot how everyone claimed what everyone would stalk everyone and hence this shit should be banned? Did you forgot that there were (and probably still are) people who tried to use AirTags to stalk? Now everyone loves AirTags and A. can add more functionality which were deemed too controversial to include at the start.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Why would sharing have made those claims any worse? And this way they annoy a huge number of people.
    - justsomehnguy 4y ago
      but stalker would make his tag shared and the victim would never know! It doesn't matter what to do this you need physical access to and the way to unlock the phone, it is still a valid way[0] and adding that at the start would clash with "you would know when [a predator's] an unknown AirTag would follow you". [0] if you can't imagine this happening to you then it doesn't means it couldn't happen.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        So if they have control over your phone they could do something less effective than install a tracking app? That's not very impressive.
        justsomehnguy 4y ago
dangus 4y ago
I agree that there should be a family sharing system for AirTags, but I'll also note that Apple specifically tells you not to use AirTags for pets.
- duxup 4y ago
  They also don’t want you to use it for people, but I found them very helpful in tracking a semi independent elderly in-law, who tends to wander, while on a family vacation. People tracking is a sensitive topic but it is also useful and legitimate in some cases. My kids school backpacks all have tags in them because they lose them from time to time.
twawaaay 4y ago
That's simple. Things like this happen when people act without principles. It is like patching software without taking one step back to understand the underlying issues. The underlying issue with airtags is supposed to be that people can use them to track other people. Well, rather than try to take a step back and understand what the problem is, Apple decided to just jump in and start figuring out some heuristics that will prevent most of the tracking by sacrificing the least usability. The result is the product becomes unusable while tracking issue isn't solved either. IMO tracking issue isn't really Apple's problem. A person that wants to track another person has a huge number of tools at their disposal. Go to any large online shopping platform like amazon or aliexpress and you can find hundreds if not thousands tracking tools. Some much better than airtags (cheaper and not retroactively traceable by Apple). Tracking should be solved legally and by educating people that tracking people without their permission is illegal and they potentially can face criminal charges, regardless of the method they use to track another person. Imagine car makers reacted to first car accidents by putting pillows around the cars rather than figuring out we need legal moves (road rules, drivers licenses, car safety standards, infrastructure to separate flows of traffic, etc.) There is a class of items that need to be restricted or nerfed because they are either inherently dangerous or they are of not much use except for committing crime or similar. But there are also things that are very useful AND at the same time can be used to commit crimes. I am not even talking about guns. Think kitchen knives. Knives are useful. Yes, we can live without them but having good sharp knives at home enhances our lives and makes it much easier to make good food. Notice, knife makers do not make kitchen knives so that they are dull. They do not make them so short that you can't reach another persons heart. Instead, we know what the knives are for and we know that what you can't do is murder another person with it. Or murder them in any other way, regardless of the tool used.
- dml2135 4y ago
  > Imagine car makers reacted to first car accidents by putting pillows around the cars rather than figuring out we need legal moves (road rules, drivers licenses, car safety standards, infrastructure to separate flows of traffic, etc.) I think this analogy may work but not in the way you are saying. "Pillows" here would be seatbelts, and other actual car safety features. Those have been massively successful in reducing traffic deaths. As bad as it is today, take a look at what car crash fatalities were like in the 60s. The car companies fought tooth and nail against safety features back in the day, and they didn't become ubiquitous until the government stepped in and required them. Which I'd image is exactly what Apple is trying to get ahead of here.
dbg31415 4y ago
I had the opposite experience. I bought a bunch of these for aging parents. Set them up on their phones, not my own phone, and put them on everything for my folks. Dad lent me a suitcase, with one of his air tags in the pocket, and a week in I still had not received any warnings. I thought it was troubling, and I wanted to see how long it would take. So I left it in my back seat for two months… at some point I just forgot it was there. It provided Dad with my car’s location until the battery died. At no point did I get any warning it was there. I don’t have any sort of joint account or family plan for iPhones. This made me really nervous about how these worked. I don’t think they do enough to tell people when they are being stalked. This all happened a year or two ago when the tags first came out. I got rid of all my AirTags after. I don’t think they respect privacy and that makes them unsafe. It makes me happy to hear people saying they got notifications. But I didn’t. Oh one more thing… I thought I turned off location tracking on my phone and it still knew where the tags that connected to my phone were. Just shows you can’t really ever turn location tracking off.
mike503 4y ago
I get the AirPods owner can see your location and I can't seem to get rid of it. Anytime I use them for the next couple hours. It's annoying.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mejutoco 4y ago
I wish I could tell Apple that I am fine with this airtag tracking me. I am open for a complicated process (not just a popup).
AlbertCory 4y ago
There's an imitation that isn't Apple-only: Chipolo. I don't have a comparison for you, sorry.
dougmwne 4y ago
Airtags are such a mess. My partner has one on his keys. First it would just notify me when he left his phone in the car. No way to permanently dismiss that notification. Hmm. Then it started notifying me all the time whether he has his phone or not. I have a near constant notification that I can only "ignore" for 24 hours. Then it started beeping at random times like in a theatre. I would gladly agree to a waver so that I stopped getting those stupid notifications. I have no stalking concerns for myself. I'm at home almost all day and that is a secret to no one. These things are probably going in the trash soon.
- fingerlocks 4y ago
  That’s odd. My partner and I have two each and never have that experience. Like not at all. I wonder if the batteries are dying or the product is defective?
  - smiley1437 4y ago
    Another anecdote, my partner and I also have 2 each and we've never, not once, had that experience either in the nearly two years we've had them. Which seems weird because you'd think it would definitely trigger the stalker warning.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    Yes, it's very clearly a bug. It didn't happen for the first month, then wouldn't stop. Turning on and off location services on his phone fixes it for a bit.
- 93po 4y ago
  To clarify, your phone tells you he left his phone behind? Or the airtag on the keys tells you that the phone was left behind? Cus the latter sounds awesome for my use case.
  - dougmwne 4y ago
    There's a product feature that notifies you when you leave your tagged item behind in a place that's not home. There's another anti-stalking feature that notifies other people if an airtag not paired with their phone is not with the phone it belongs to. But I'm encountering a bug where I get notified all the time, not just when the paired phone is not present. I know it's a bug because it only happens with one airtag, not the other.
kentonv 4y ago
Reminds me of how Google keeps giving me security alerts saying that an unverified developer has access to my account. It highlights a particular Google Apps Script which I've granted access, and strongly encourages me to revoke it, because Google just doesn't know who this person is. The person is me. I wrote the script. I granted my own account access to my own account. The account owning the script, and the account it has access to, are one and the same Google account. Yet still, constant alerts.
- ultra_nick 4y ago
  Hopefully their AI doesn't permanently ban the wrong account.
nerdjon 4y ago
Is it just me or does the author not really understand what a family iCloud is? It's not merging accounts as they seem to think it is. I don't gain access to my partners data just because we are on a family plan. Really the only "issue" we have is the credit card has to be the same but that's such a small issue to resolve since we have a shared credit card for shared expenses. I don't really see the issue with going the route of just setting up a family link between your separate accounts if you have a dog together. Honestly that feels like more of a commitment... Regardless of that for a moment. I think its better that the only way you can "share" a AirTag is through family. I can't really think of a reason that this would be an issue with friends that can't be easily solved by the 24 hour notice (or worst case needing to do that for a few days if you are doing a trip together or something). Adding the ability to permanently do this otherwise I would worry could either be accidentally enabled or have a strong risk for abuse.
- jrmg 4y ago
  There are loads of comments here from people that don’t realize that you actually can turn off notifications for AirTags that belong to family members you’ve linked your iCloud account to. It’s mentioned in one sentence at the end of the article.
  - nerdjon 4y ago
    I am referring to this line in the article: > We currently have separate accounts, though, and aren’t interested in fully merging our clouds. It seems like they are making out a Family iCloud to be a much bigger thing than it actually is.
    - jrmg 4y ago
      Yeah, I agree.
  - 404mm 4y ago
    How can you do that?! I need this! I have AirTags, family setup and plague of notifications :(
nkantar 4y ago
I recently bought a few AirTags to track our vehicles—two bicycles, a motorcycle, and a car—and have been fairly disappointed. The inability to pair to a family plan (or even just multiple individual accounts) makes it useless for anything we share, like the aforementioned car. Ditto for our pets, which would be at least somewhat appealing if that weren’t an issue. I’ve put them on the vehicles we don’t share, and have been mostly amused when I ride somewhere and walk away from the bike. I suppose it’s good I haven’t really tested it any more than that. I’d order quite a few more if we could share them, but as it is I’ll even replace the ones we have in use if I happen across an alternative that fits the bill. I also removed the speakers[0] to make them slightly harder to pinpoint in case of actual theft. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-CGheQ53M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-CGheQ53M
93po 4y ago
I tried to use an Airtag to keep track of a the second group of people I was with at Disney World and it was beyond useless. For some reason they work well for my day to day life, and maybe it's because I'm checking for the location of something usually after it's been sitting still for hours. But at Disney it completely failed to find the Airtag unless I was standing literally next to it.
more_corn 4y ago
They need to have an option to mark an AirTag as friendly.
juancn 4y ago
Family sharing would help a lot with AirTags, sadly they don't support it. I have one on my dog, and warns my wife each time they go for a walk, since it's paired with my iCloud account. It looks like it should be a relatively simple software fix but somebody made a dumb call early on in design.

86 points by mikece 4y ago

ChrisRR 4y ago

TLDR: Author has an airtag on their dog

aldarisbm 4y ago
seriously...
sybercecurity 4y ago
It is a weirdly framed feature request. Sounds like they want some way to signal that this third party AirTag is actually "co-owned" or at least the user knows about it and silence (maybe even track).
- cr3ative 4y ago
  Yes - it would make sense for them to be optionally, per-device, pooled in Family Sharing in my opinion.
cr3ative 4y ago
That's a little unfair. The problem is more that families sharing airtags don't have a good option to trust eachothers tags.
- lsaferite 4y ago
  I think families _do_ have an option and it's listed in the article. The author just didn't want to take that route as it's more merging of accounts than they are comfortable with. I'd frame it more like Apple doesn't support the idea of shared resources except in a family account setting. A good example could be roommates living in a house and sharing a dog. A family account makes no sense here and the systems in place don't support sharing an AirTag for them.
  - cr3ative 4y ago
    Sadly, they do not. I've got the full Family Sharing thing going with Apple, Airtags are notably absent from it.
dangus 4y ago
A better way to show the need for a family sharing would be examples like shared car keys, and luggage.
hungryforcodes 4y ago
Message: don't get a dog.

cld8483 4y ago

Well that is what dogs do.

yieldcrv 4y ago

This but airpods. The last few months when I go out I get notifications that some airpods are following me. As if someone dropped one in my jacket pocket specifically to follow me around popular bars, as opposed to someone else just going to the same popular local bars. The first time it was screenshot worthy at best. I'm not the demographic to have predatory tactics done towards me, the likelihood was too small. The following times its just a nuisance, a conversation starter for a pickup improv skit.

_justinfunk 4y ago
I appreciate the opposite notifications saying "You have left your AirPods behind" while I am listening to my AirPods.

bcherny 4y ago

I recently bought a bunch of AirTags for my family: for our keys, our bike, our luggage. Annoyingly, every AirTag needs to be linked to a single iPhone. Even when everyone belongs to the same Family. AirTags also make annoying sounds every time I grab my keys to go out. They’re still the best UX on the market, but I wish Apple would improve the UX just a bit more. Maybe their policy folks are worried about news stories about people using AirTags to stalk, which is unfortunately a reasonable fear.

marcosscriven 4y ago
I definitely think there should be a way to attach tags to a family. Like the original article I use one in my dog. I know it’s not the purported use, but it has and does work for us.
- drcongo 4y ago
  My dog did a runner a week after we got her, only found her thanks to the AirTag. Despite all the AirTag annoyances, I'll definitely keep using one on the dog.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Particularly because there's already shared Apple services mapped to Families. It's very frustrating.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  > I use one in my dog. I tried this but it’s annoying to have to keep feeding it to the dog every other day. We eventually just attached it to her collar.
Brajeshwar 4y ago
I believe in the next couple of years, they would have done their extensive research and have the feature like how we got with Photos after years of wait.

marcosscriven 4y ago

For some reason my iPhone has started warning me someone’s iPods are following me. But they are my own iPods as registered in Find My.

the_snooze 4y ago

Given all the edge cases with AirTags (i.e., everything from "dog stalker" to actual stalkers), I get the sense Apple didn't bother to do much adversarial usability testing on these things. They made a thing because it's cool tech, damn everything else, if you don't like it then tough shit.

madeofpalk 4y ago
I get the complete opposite impression - they did more of that than others, compromising the product (in one sense) to accomodate for bad actors, resulting in 'bugs' like this.
- the_snooze 4y ago
  I disagree in that I see bugs like this help bad actors. If users are conditioned to accept false alarms from rather common use cases, then that weakens true alarms about actual stalkers. It's an inherent contradiction in the AirTag's anti-stalking requirements: it needs to be a useful alarm and not go off under "normal" proximity relationships, but most stalkers are people close to the victim to begin with. If I were building a system with such self-defeating requirements, I would take a step back and either roll it out very slowly, or conclude that this is a bad idea completely.
some_random 4y ago
I can't imagine you've actually read into the anti-stalking measures they've implemented because it's pretty damn clear to me that they've thought about adversarial usage. You can absolutely disagree with where they drew the lines between safety and usability, but claiming they didn't think about it past "cool tech" is farcical.

fwlr 4y ago

A “Trust this AirTag” option, perhaps requiring the AirTag’s owner’s device to be involved as well, could solve this issue.

ezfe 4y ago
This option is available if the AirTag is a family members' AirTag. You can ignore alerts indefinitely under those conditions.
- cr3ative 4y ago
  It isn’t. You can’t. I would love that to be true.
  - ezfe 4y ago
    Yes, it literally is. Aside from my partners' AirPods which are bugged up (unique to them specifically, not sure...) I've ignored alerts on all her other tags. When you receive the tracking alert, tap it and you will have a few options. One of those options is to ignore alerts. When you tap it, it will ask you whether you want to Pause Tracking Alerts for the day or indefinitely. If you tap indefinitely, you'll stop getting alerts for that item. You can see this referenced on Apple Support [1], but I've done this personally with success. The only devices it doesn't work on are AirPods but it works on my Chipolo wallet card and all my/their AirTags. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227
    - cr3ative 4y ago
      Thank you, this is news to me, and apparently something is stubbornly not working properly in my setup. That "indefinite" option, which I've never seen before but you kindly highlight, should fix this case. Time to... debug a coin.
      - ezfe 4y ago
        If you are seeing their name (ie "John's AirTag" or "John's iPhone") then it should work. On the AirPods I mentioned that don't work, no name appears which I suspect is why.

drewg123 4y ago

Speaking of odd "Find My" notifications... Does this happen to anybody else: When I take a flight, I'll put my backpack with my M1 MBP into the overhead. Like clockwork, when I land, I get a notification that I left the laptop behind at the origin airport. This happens when I don't even touch the laptop inflight, so I could not have disabled BT or wifi. What metric is making Apple think the laptop was left behind?

nonfamous 4y ago
At a guess: AirTags (and all Apple devices) get their location from nearby iPhones. If nearby passengers turn on Airplane Mode before departure, their phones stick to being located at the departure airport. When they land and turn off Airplane mode, there’s a short window where they broadcast their “current” location (the departure airport) before getting a new GPS signal. That’s what your M1 is picking up when you land.
- drewg123 4y ago
  Ah, cool. I had thought it was just paired with my phone, and was somehow sad that it could not see it for a while. Your explanation makes more sense.
- shaunsingh0207 4y ago
  Whenever I get on the subway, right after I exit the train I get a notification that my MacBook's left behind at the train station I boarded at. That makes sense then
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groot2581 4y ago
This happens to me on car rides as well. I’ve made my friends pull over so I could check that I indeed packed the backpack with my AirPods.
mgkimsal 4y ago
I get notifications that my AirPods are 'left behind' at the gym when I'm driving home, even though... I'm wearing them in the car and the case is in my pocket. Yet... the one time I actually forgot the case in my gym locker, and got to the car... nothing. Happens sometimes when I leave the office too; half a mile from the office I get an alert that I've left my AirPods at the office even though - again - I'm wearing them, they're connected to the phone I'm holding which is also with me (and moving) and the case is with me too. This will become a 'boy who cried wolf' situation soon, if it's not already there.

drcongo 4y ago

My AirTags keep notifying me that I've left stuff behind and that it was last seen at my home address. Other times they notify me that something in the same room as me has been left behind 3 streets away.

ezfe 4y ago
You can open up the item and edit the locations to ignore. If it already has your home address, you can make the radius bigger.
- drcongo 4y ago
  I've already got a huge radius around my house, big enough to make the AirTags almost pointless.
bluetidepro 4y ago
> My AirTags keep notifying me that I've left stuff behind and that it was last seen at my home address. After the 2nd or 3rd time this happened to me, the notification had an option to turn on like a "okay location" or however they phrased it. This stops that from happening when you lave it at a known/home address. That worked for me. You may have missed it?

bluetidepro 4y ago

> The problem is that the AirTag is registered to my partner’s device. That means that Apple doesn’t recognize my iPhone in connection with the AirTag, seeing the unknown tracker as a threat to my safety. > The notification provides an option to disable the AirTag, which would be helpful to stop an unwanted third-party from knowing your location. That feature renders the AirTag useless, though, so it would no longer be able to track my dog if she did get out. I'm confused. That doesn't make it useless? If you disable the notification on HIS phone, his partner would still get notifications on HER phone as it's link to her account? I'm confused what he means. And if it's not even linked to his account to begin with, how is he even able to track it besides the stalking notification? Something doesn't add up to me.

tomschlick 4y ago
The disable isn't a disable of notifications. It disables the airtag from reporting its status as an anti-stalking measure. So it wouldn't work for anyone.
- bluetidepro 4y ago
  > The disable isn't a disable of notifications. It disables the airtag from reporting its status as an anti-stalking measure. So it wouldn't work for anyone. OHHHH okay, that makes more sense. That was the part of the puzzle that was confusing me. Thanks!
  - ec109685 4y ago
    If you’re in the same icloud family, this isn’t a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34897040
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- soco 4y ago
  So I can walk around and disable every airtag in sight? Some important information must be missing here...

bena 4y ago

This is a meta problem with a lot of account-based services. You have someone you share resources with, but not accounts. So they have a dog, they have an AirTag on the dog, they'd both like to know about the tag, but they can't connect the tag to both accounts without making the accounts too intertwined. Like how I can't realistically share my Amazon Prime Video account with my wife because it is also my Amazon everything else account. Which is also an issue with Alexa/Echo. Which is kind of weird. Because this seems like a fairly simple graph. Users and service accounts are nodes and the edges describe which users have access to which service accounts. So Apple needs a user account for her, a user account for her husband, and then an AirTag service account they can both connect to. But instead, AirTags are a part of her husband's user account.

oakesm9 4y ago
A bit off topic, but with your Amazon account you can create an "Amazon Household" and share any prime benefits you have with another adult[0]. You both still keep separate accounts wiht separate logins, but you'll both get the benefit of a single Prime account. [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeId%3DGYLAACCNR8G3VVRM https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeI...
- sib 4y ago
  An Amazon Household requires sharing payment method. So it's not quite a clean "keep separate accounts" solution.

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dokem 4y ago

Is there any reason to believe that air tags actually enables or encourages otherwise non-stalkers into stalking? I'm not really inclined to believe so. Stalking isn't difficult or technically challenging thing to do. If you can get the chip on them then you can just follow them home and know where they live. Then you can stalk them whenever you want. The airtag maybe makes it more convenient but I don't think convenience is what dissuades non-stalkers. I can see more insecure people tracking their partner but there's already many other ways to do so. I don't really think this is an issue.

kyleee 4y ago
I tend to agree; I think Apple’s efforts are mostly PR to avoid low quality media outlets ex. vice, etc. from being able to write AirTag stalking articles

kybernetyk 4y ago

It's a shame you can't share one air tag between multiple people. Like: car keys. Why can't me and my wife have access to the one air tag attached to our family car's keys? Why is this something someone at Apple hadn't thought of?

justsomehnguy 4y ago
I bet they did but it was a too big can of worms. Did you forgot how everyone claimed what everyone would stalk everyone and hence this shit should be banned? Did you forgot that there were (and probably still are) people who tried to use AirTags to stalk? Now everyone loves AirTags and A. can add more functionality which were deemed too controversial to include at the start.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Why would sharing have made those claims any worse? And this way they annoy a huge number of people.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    but stalker would make his tag shared and the victim would never know! It doesn't matter what to do this you need physical access to and the way to unlock the phone, it is still a valid way[0] and adding that at the start would clash with "you would know when [a predator's] an unknown AirTag would follow you". [0] if you can't imagine this happening to you then it doesn't means it couldn't happen.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      So if they have control over your phone they could do something less effective than install a tracking app? That's not very impressive.
      - justsomehnguy 4y ago

dangus 4y ago

I agree that there should be a family sharing system for AirTags, but I'll also note that Apple specifically tells you not to use AirTags for pets.

duxup 4y ago
They also don’t want you to use it for people, but I found them very helpful in tracking a semi independent elderly in-law, who tends to wander, while on a family vacation. People tracking is a sensitive topic but it is also useful and legitimate in some cases. My kids school backpacks all have tags in them because they lose them from time to time.

twawaaay 4y ago

That's simple. Things like this happen when people act without principles. It is like patching software without taking one step back to understand the underlying issues. The underlying issue with airtags is supposed to be that people can use them to track other people. Well, rather than try to take a step back and understand what the problem is, Apple decided to just jump in and start figuring out some heuristics that will prevent most of the tracking by sacrificing the least usability. The result is the product becomes unusable while tracking issue isn't solved either. IMO tracking issue isn't really Apple's problem. A person that wants to track another person has a huge number of tools at their disposal. Go to any large online shopping platform like amazon or aliexpress and you can find hundreds if not thousands tracking tools. Some much better than airtags (cheaper and not retroactively traceable by Apple). Tracking should be solved legally and by educating people that tracking people without their permission is illegal and they potentially can face criminal charges, regardless of the method they use to track another person. Imagine car makers reacted to first car accidents by putting pillows around the cars rather than figuring out we need legal moves (road rules, drivers licenses, car safety standards, infrastructure to separate flows of traffic, etc.) There is a class of items that need to be restricted or nerfed because they are either inherently dangerous or they are of not much use except for committing crime or similar. But there are also things that are very useful AND at the same time can be used to commit crimes. I am not even talking about guns. Think kitchen knives. Knives are useful. Yes, we can live without them but having good sharp knives at home enhances our lives and makes it much easier to make good food. Notice, knife makers do not make kitchen knives so that they are dull. They do not make them so short that you can't reach another persons heart. Instead, we know what the knives are for and we know that what you can't do is murder another person with it. Or murder them in any other way, regardless of the tool used.

dml2135 4y ago
> Imagine car makers reacted to first car accidents by putting pillows around the cars rather than figuring out we need legal moves (road rules, drivers licenses, car safety standards, infrastructure to separate flows of traffic, etc.) I think this analogy may work but not in the way you are saying. "Pillows" here would be seatbelts, and other actual car safety features. Those have been massively successful in reducing traffic deaths. As bad as it is today, take a look at what car crash fatalities were like in the 60s. The car companies fought tooth and nail against safety features back in the day, and they didn't become ubiquitous until the government stepped in and required them. Which I'd image is exactly what Apple is trying to get ahead of here.

dbg31415 4y ago

I had the opposite experience. I bought a bunch of these for aging parents. Set them up on their phones, not my own phone, and put them on everything for my folks. Dad lent me a suitcase, with one of his air tags in the pocket, and a week in I still had not received any warnings. I thought it was troubling, and I wanted to see how long it would take. So I left it in my back seat for two months… at some point I just forgot it was there. It provided Dad with my car’s location until the battery died. At no point did I get any warning it was there. I don’t have any sort of joint account or family plan for iPhones. This made me really nervous about how these worked. I don’t think they do enough to tell people when they are being stalked. This all happened a year or two ago when the tags first came out. I got rid of all my AirTags after. I don’t think they respect privacy and that makes them unsafe. It makes me happy to hear people saying they got notifications. But I didn’t. Oh one more thing… I thought I turned off location tracking on my phone and it still knew where the tags that connected to my phone were. Just shows you can’t really ever turn location tracking off.

mike503 4y ago

I get the AirPods owner can see your location and I can't seem to get rid of it. Anytime I use them for the next couple hours. It's annoying.

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mejutoco 4y ago

I wish I could tell Apple that I am fine with this airtag tracking me. I am open for a complicated process (not just a popup).

AlbertCory 4y ago

There's an imitation that isn't Apple-only: Chipolo. I don't have a comparison for you, sorry.

dougmwne 4y ago

Airtags are such a mess. My partner has one on his keys. First it would just notify me when he left his phone in the car. No way to permanently dismiss that notification. Hmm. Then it started notifying me all the time whether he has his phone or not. I have a near constant notification that I can only "ignore" for 24 hours. Then it started beeping at random times like in a theatre. I would gladly agree to a waver so that I stopped getting those stupid notifications. I have no stalking concerns for myself. I'm at home almost all day and that is a secret to no one. These things are probably going in the trash soon.

fingerlocks 4y ago
That’s odd. My partner and I have two each and never have that experience. Like not at all. I wonder if the batteries are dying or the product is defective?
- smiley1437 4y ago
  Another anecdote, my partner and I also have 2 each and we've never, not once, had that experience either in the nearly two years we've had them. Which seems weird because you'd think it would definitely trigger the stalker warning.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  Yes, it's very clearly a bug. It didn't happen for the first month, then wouldn't stop. Turning on and off location services on his phone fixes it for a bit.
93po 4y ago
To clarify, your phone tells you he left his phone behind? Or the airtag on the keys tells you that the phone was left behind? Cus the latter sounds awesome for my use case.
- dougmwne 4y ago
  There's a product feature that notifies you when you leave your tagged item behind in a place that's not home. There's another anti-stalking feature that notifies other people if an airtag not paired with their phone is not with the phone it belongs to. But I'm encountering a bug where I get notified all the time, not just when the paired phone is not present. I know it's a bug because it only happens with one airtag, not the other.

kentonv 4y ago

Reminds me of how Google keeps giving me security alerts saying that an unverified developer has access to my account. It highlights a particular Google Apps Script which I've granted access, and strongly encourages me to revoke it, because Google just doesn't know who this person is. The person is me. I wrote the script. I granted my own account access to my own account. The account owning the script, and the account it has access to, are one and the same Google account. Yet still, constant alerts.

ultra_nick 4y ago
Hopefully their AI doesn't permanently ban the wrong account.

nerdjon 4y ago

Is it just me or does the author not really understand what a family iCloud is? It's not merging accounts as they seem to think it is. I don't gain access to my partners data just because we are on a family plan. Really the only "issue" we have is the credit card has to be the same but that's such a small issue to resolve since we have a shared credit card for shared expenses. I don't really see the issue with going the route of just setting up a family link between your separate accounts if you have a dog together. Honestly that feels like more of a commitment... Regardless of that for a moment. I think its better that the only way you can "share" a AirTag is through family. I can't really think of a reason that this would be an issue with friends that can't be easily solved by the 24 hour notice (or worst case needing to do that for a few days if you are doing a trip together or something). Adding the ability to permanently do this otherwise I would worry could either be accidentally enabled or have a strong risk for abuse.

jrmg 4y ago
There are loads of comments here from people that don’t realize that you actually can turn off notifications for AirTags that belong to family members you’ve linked your iCloud account to. It’s mentioned in one sentence at the end of the article.
- nerdjon 4y ago
  I am referring to this line in the article: > We currently have separate accounts, though, and aren’t interested in fully merging our clouds. It seems like they are making out a Family iCloud to be a much bigger thing than it actually is.
  - jrmg 4y ago
    Yeah, I agree.
- 404mm 4y ago
  How can you do that?! I need this! I have AirTags, family setup and plague of notifications :(

nkantar 4y ago

I recently bought a few AirTags to track our vehicles—two bicycles, a motorcycle, and a car—and have been fairly disappointed. The inability to pair to a family plan (or even just multiple individual accounts) makes it useless for anything we share, like the aforementioned car. Ditto for our pets, which would be at least somewhat appealing if that weren’t an issue. I’ve put them on the vehicles we don’t share, and have been mostly amused when I ride somewhere and walk away from the bike. I suppose it’s good I haven’t really tested it any more than that. I’d order quite a few more if we could share them, but as it is I’ll even replace the ones we have in use if I happen across an alternative that fits the bill. I also removed the speakers[0] to make them slightly harder to pinpoint in case of actual theft. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-CGheQ53M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-CGheQ53M

93po 4y ago

I tried to use an Airtag to keep track of a the second group of people I was with at Disney World and it was beyond useless. For some reason they work well for my day to day life, and maybe it's because I'm checking for the location of something usually after it's been sitting still for hours. But at Disney it completely failed to find the Airtag unless I was standing literally next to it.

more_corn 4y ago

They need to have an option to mark an AirTag as friendly.

juancn 4y ago

Family sharing would help a lot with AirTags, sadly they don't support it. I have one on my dog, and warns my wife each time they go for a walk, since it's paired with my iCloud account. It looks like it should be a relatively simple software fix but somebody made a dumb call early on in design.