23 ms·

Apple and Google deliver support for unwanted tracking alerts in iOS and Android

493 points by WalterSobchak 2y ago

userbinator 2y ago
I believe the title parses as "(unwanted tracking) alerts", and not "unwanted (tracking alerts)" as I read it initially.
codalan 2y ago
Going to be pretty funny when pranksters start putting airtags into places where they can't be found just to annoy people with unknown tracker alerts.
ChuckMcM 2y ago
This is great and it came up at dinner last night which is kind of weird. Had the odd experience of going to a retreat where everyone sat listening to speakers, and then all went to lunch, and then back to the speakers, then all to dinner, then back to the speakers. And my iPhone popped up an alert that there was an airtag following me. (It wasn't of course it was an airtag in another attendee's bag to track their bag which they had with them, near me kind of randomly, but being driven by the same forces of movement :-)).
- larsnystrom 2y ago
  I thought such notices wouldn’t appear as long as the AirTag owner’s iPhone was also near the AirTag? Maybe their battery died though.
  - hunter2_ 2y ago
    My wife fitted her luggage with AirTags but doesn't have an iPhone (just an iPad, normally turned off). The alerts I get are maddening, but I'd rather receive them than disable all alerting...
- kstrauser 2y ago
  My understanding is you should only get the notification if the tag isn't with its owner. That's how it plays out in my personal experience. Back when AirTags were completely broken and didn't support family sharing, I'd get notified if I had my wife's car keys with me only when she wasn't with me, i.e. because I grabbed hers to run a quick errand. This notification would be utterly useless if that were no longer the case: you'd spend half your time on a flight or bus ride closing the unwanted and unhelpful popups.
  - rsstack 2y ago
    I use AirPods Pro but an Android phone. My girlfriend and friends we hung out with would complain about these, so I eventually found a way to turn off "Find my device" on the AirPods by connecting them to my iPad. I now can't track them but also people aren't mad at me for "tracking" them.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      Huh, good point that I hadn’t considered.
    - beeboobaa3 2y ago
      Interesting. I've had Apple users recommend AirPods to me before, but I don't own any Apple devices so I already had a feeling it wouldn't work out. Would be insane if they would constantly be generating alerts on others their iPhones.
      - rsstack 2y ago
        I think if you use them out of the box, they won't generate the alerts. If I understand Apple's data model correctly, once I paired them to my iPad for the first time, they were enrolled to my iCloud account, and then the tracking system was enabled.
        beeboobaa3 2y ago
        So I'm screwed if an iPhone user ever pairs with my headphones, i.e. when I lend them to them?
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Try chaperoning a bunch of kids on a field trip. Half of them have trackers attached to their backpacks, so you get a bunch of those notifications.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm still trying to make sense of this, at all. Lots of technobable flying around and no big picture talk. Why the fuck would Google and Apple work together on this AND trash their tech at the same time. Feels like they are trying to stave off regulation. Someone will find a way around this. It's too fun of a hack to go unanswered for more than a week. Now only the criminals will have this physical tracking ability (well,them and Apple+Google).
LorenDB 2y ago
It's interesting to see that Google takes this so seriously they're backporting it to Android 6. I guess they probably have metrics on what Android versions are still in active use, but I'm a little surprised that Android 6.0 would still be used heavily enough to warrant the backport. Regardless, it's good to see this sort of industry cooperation from companies who would normally be at each other's throats.
- tantalor 2y ago
  Supporting Android 6 would be like supporting iOS 9. Apple is only supporting latest version of iOS (17.5).
  - runjake 2y ago
    > Supporting Android 6 would be like supporting iOS 9. 1. Your point still stands, but this is because this update is probably shipping as a Google Play Framework update, which works on >= 6.0. Google is not (to my knowledge) releasing a new firmware. Apple would do well to decouple certain software components from iOS, IMHO. 2. In case others are curious about iOS version market share, statcounter's stats for April 2024: 17.4 (current until today): 51% 17.3: 22% 16.6: 4.3% 16.7: 3.18% 16.1: 2.8% 16.3: 2.12% https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/ios/mobile-tablet/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/ios/mobil...
    - tjoff 2y ago
      Android 6: 0.79%
    - tadfisher 2y ago
      As a developer, that long tail of folks on the previous major version really sucks with fast-moving frameworks like SwiftUI. There's no way my company (a banking app) would drop 10% of customers, so we typically do N-1 for iOS support. Our Android app shipped almost 3 years ago with minSdk=24 (Android 6.0) and we haven't had to update it.
pompino 2y ago
> It’s possible the tracker is attached to an item the user is borrowing, but if not, iPhone can view the tracker’s identifier, have the tracker play a sound to help locate it, and access instructions to disable it. That means someone can steal your stuff, and then disable the tracker so you can't find it. Most people and myself included were sticking these cheap tags on everything we own, and it was genuinely useful during travel or in scenarios where theft was a consideration.
- thebruce87m 2y ago
  > That means someone can steal your stuff, and then disable the tracker so you can't find it. This is by design. AirTags were never marketed as an anti-theft device. They had anti-stalking features from day one which were/are at odds with anti-theft. It was marketed as helping you find things that are lost, nothing more.
  - pompino 2y ago
    Design doesn't matter after a point - you have to meet your users on their turf. Most people were using it for other reasons - and if Apple's stance is, fine - don't buy it, then so be it.
    - asdfaoeu 2y ago
      There's two products here Bluetooth trackers and phones. People don't want to buy phones that expose themselves to tracking by other people.
      - pompino 2y ago
        Every phone is already being being tracked and logged. What youre really saying is that people often tolerate some tracking if done by CIA/phone company/Apple/Google/FB. We're just playing with semantics here. Tracking is either acceptable or not. The only real solution is to go off-grid.
        2y ago
exabrial 2y ago
Sigh. I get it there's been a few abuses of the technology... but it was literally already ripe for abuse anyway. Whether Apple intended this or not: The real world primary use case for AirTags is still tracking stolen crap. I would to _not_ want to alert thieves to the presence of an attached tracker in that case. I guess tracking your lost luggage is likely a #2, but if you were to survey what people were actually using them for, I'm betting it'd be #1 above. The only way I can think of solving this is allowing a silent mode on the tracker that requires both a private key from the user (to avoid getting NSL'd) and a private key from law enforcement (Apple / Google already have law enforcement portals) and finally one-way hashing the keys and publishing the results to a public irrevocable block ledger. One could see if your key was on the list to see if you Airtag was silenced, but you couldn't pick out specific tags that were silenced. The law enforcement agency's keys would also be hashed and published, allowing us some transparency on who is requesting the most tag silences, so we could monitor the monitors. If this were bundled up in a blockchain, and the tags were programmed only to act on a blockchain, we could avoid abuse and gain a useful feature.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > Whether Apple intended this or not: The real world primary use case for AirTags is still tracking stolen crap. You're conflating your primary use case with the world's. 95% of the AirTags I'm aware of in the wild in both my family and friends are used for finding misplaced items - not stolen ones.
  - datavirtue 2y ago
    Same thing.
    - AndrewDucker 2y ago
      A misplaced item I left in the office will not be following a third party about. And so will not be mistaken for stalking them.
  - chankstein38 2y ago
jtbayly 2y ago
Wait, Google is literally the world's largest unwanted tracker, right? Are they going to alert Android users that they have been tracking them?
- foepys 2y ago
  I'd argue that Apple is operating on the same scale, at least regarding physical presence. Apple disallows disabling Bluetooth and WiFi easily because it allows them to track their air tags everywhere.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    They don’t “disallow” turning off Bluetooth easily. You can trivially do it via the settings app. The control panel pull down does it temporarily because that’s what most people want. 99.9% of people are turning off wifi because the wifi connection they currently have is acting up. So turning it back on tomorrow so the user doesn’t forget and ends up chewing through mobile data is the obvious best UX.
    - chatmasta 2y ago
      Nah, this is clearly a deliberate dark pattern from Apple. They could easily add a long-press option on the Bluetooth icon to fully disable it. But they don’t. My solution is a Shortcut to disable Bluetooth, triggered by a widget on my Home Screen. It’s annoying that I need to allocate space for that, but at least I can (actually) toggle Bluetooth without opening Settings.
      - sbuk 2y ago
        Clearly.
    - lapcat 2y ago
      Except that every single iOS update, including today's iOS 17.5, silently re-enables Bluetooth even after you specifically disable it in the Settings app. FB9992639 "Thank you for filing this feedback report. We reviewed your report and determined the behavior you experienced is currently functioning as intended."
cm2187 2y ago
Will be fun in a train full of passengers and tracked luggages moving all together.
- sigwinch28 2y ago
  At least for AirTags before today, this functionality allegedly only triggers when the device is not near one of the owner’s iPhones/iPad/Macbooks.
  - OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
    Will be fun on a United plane full of passengers and tracked luggages moving all together. Happy?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwaway63467 2y ago
Will this work with malicious tags as well? I.e. tags that are designed to not communicate with a given phone but with other devices nearby? Can that be detected? My understanding is that regular tags will communicate with all phones, but maybe there’s a way to differentiate who to respond to or change identity for every ping? Not familiar with the exact protocol but basically many different tags near a phone wouldn’t trigger the warning, so if a tag can produce multiple identifiers that the adversary controls it could still evade detection?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- IshKebab 2y ago
  There's some info about Apple's network here: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack?tab=readme-ov-file#how-does-apples-find-my-network-work https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack?tab=readme-ov-fil... Seems like in theory you could do that, though there are definitely heuristics you could apply to detect those tags, depending on how stealthy they are being. Also on the servers side Apple could just limit you to a reasonable number of tags.
- winterdeaf 2y ago
  As far as I am aware, there is no way to stop malicious tags without modifying the protocol to authenticate the messages being broadcast as originating form a genuine tag. [1] Making a tag that is not trackable is currently as easy as flipping a bit in the BLE advertisement. The same message is broadcast to all phones, but yes, a tag could also produce multiple identifiers and evade detection. [2] [1]: Section 8 of "Abuse-Resistant Location Tracking: Balancing Privacy and Safety in the Offline Finding Ecosystem". https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1332.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1332.pdf [2]: "Track You: A Deep Dive into Safety Alerts for Apple AirTags". https://petsymposium.org/popets/2023/popets-2023-0102.pdf https://petsymposium.org/popets/2023/popets-2023-0102.pdf
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    The broadcast isn't signed by some kind of hardware key?
Nevermark 2y ago
So if someone steals my luggage they can drive around with it until it alerts them and they turn my luggage tracker off? I am not complaining. What it amounts to, is that the digital world enables so much information gathering and using flexibility, we need fine grain permissions and controls for our devices and services, so they "do the right thing" for all kinds of corner cases. But we don't have an information infrastructure for that, so the best we can do is balance concerns.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  > So if someone steals my luggage they can drive around with it until it alerts them and they turn my luggage tracker off? It's a common misconception that Airtags and similar products are designed to help you locate stolen items. They not. "Tracker on stolen device" and "Tracker planted for the purposes of stalking" are indistinguishable situations. They're to help you find things that you lost. They're amazing for that. They're sometimes helpful for finding stolen things too, but that is a side-effect.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    Tracking possessions and tracking people are easily distinguishable as tasks. One is highly useful and moral, the other is highly immoral and potentially destructive. But we don’t have an information infrastructure that lets tech understand the difference yet. That was my point. I think I made it clearly.
LeoPanthera 2y ago
I'd like to repost this as a top-level comment because a lot of people are complaining about the same thing: It's a common misconception that Airtags and similar products are designed to help you locate stolen items. They not. "Tracker on stolen device" and "Tracker planted for the purposes of stalking" are indistinguishable situations. They're to help you find things that you lost. They're amazing for that. They're sometimes helpful for finding stolen things too, but that is a side-effect.
melodyogonna 2y ago
[dead]
gnicholas 2y ago
Will this affect battery life? I can see how Apple's proprietary AirTags don't affect battery (of smartphones around them) much, but if they're trying to detect other companies' trackers it seems less likely that the battery impact is quite so minimal.
- AndrewDucker 2y ago
  It's exactly the same protocol. That's the point.
AndrewDucker 2y ago
Annoyingly, though, you can't get a device that is trackable on both iPhone and Android networks. Which is annoying, because I have an Android and my wife has an iPhone, and it would be nice to be able to both track the same objects.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  Aren't there third-party devices like Tile that you could use? Sure, it can't be tracked by every iOS and Android device, but it's not like there aren't trackers that you and your wife could both use.
  - AndrewDucker 2y ago
    True, there are devices that work with both. But they use their own, much smaller, tracking network, rather than having one ubiquitous network.
    - hanniabu 2y ago
      How does the tracking network size affect functionality?
      - Jtsummers 2y ago
        > How does the tracking network size affect functionality? Ability to actually find lost items. AirTags are so successful (in the US) because of the ubiquity of iPhones which are, effectively, constantly reporting on the location of detected devices. A smaller network of listening/reporting devices will not be as effective unless it happens to be very popular right in the area the device was lost.
      - mplewis 2y ago
        If there are more devices that can see your stolen device, there is a higher likelihood you will be able to track your stolen device.
      - ihuman 2y ago
notfed 2y ago
I'm pretty sure my neighbors are getting tracking alerts for my airtag in my house. The speaker keeps going off. They're 70 years old. I'm sure seeing "AirTag found moving with you" is confusing them and possibly freaking them out. I bought the airtag for my dog, but now am having second thoughts, I'm just imagining all the freakouts I'll cause when walking on trails.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  > I'm just imagining all the freakouts I'll cause when walking on trails. You'd have to follow someone for 30+ minutes without your phone (or other device if you paired it with something else) nearby.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Seems pretty easy to do on popular urban trails to be honest. Some of the trails in my town have a group of people every like 30 feet and its pretty easy to end up keeping pace with them the entire hike unless you walk faster and pass them up.
- lanewinfield 2y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, you have to be actually traveling (i.e. beyond the house) with an unknown airtag for it to start alerting you. If your neighbors are not traveling with you places, it's probably not what's going on.
  - Kronopath 2y ago
    Yes, but it’s not always perfect. I’ve been notified of an “unknown AirTag” while I was home. When I checked the locations it was seen with me, it was a random zigzag within a block or two of my home. I’m pretty sure what happened is that the AirTag belonged to one of my neighbours, there were some GPS distortions happening that made my phone think it was moving slightly, it kept hearing the AirTag’s signal, and it assumed I was being stalked while wandering near home. This person might have the same thing happening to them.
perfmode 2y ago
It's beautiful when we can cross boundaries and agree on fundamental goods that benefit us all collectively.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  But of course, no messaging. They would rather let us fight for that.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    WhatsApp/signal/telegram/Discord/MMS/snapchat/etc
    - yieldcrv 2y ago
      America masquerading as a class-free society doesn't address people's desire to have a class-based society, so they seek that freedom where they can
  - LVB 2y ago
    I think we’re slowly getting there, right? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38293082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38293082
y04nn 2y ago
You know what would be even better? That they agree on a common standard for interoperability between both systems. They both work in the similar way and do the same thing, this would be great to have a standard.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  FTA: “Apple and Google have worked together to create an industry specification” … “Apple and Google will continue to work with the Internet Engineering Task Force via the Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers working group to develop the official standard for this technology.” That’s what is happening here. I’m not sure why people are always quick to assume negatives without doing even the most cursory reading of linked articles.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    I think the problem they're referring to is that we're being dragged through this brouhaha to stop an unintended side-effect from a proprietary network. In an ideal world Android users can detect unwanted Airtags because the protocol is documented and open. In the world we live in, Google has to go out of their way to solve problems Apple is inventing for them. The only possible interpretation of this is that Apple knows their current system wouldn't survive antitrust inquiries. So they're making a pathetically marginal concession ("well we did let you track the hostile users!") to cement the rationale of a pointlessly insular system. Once again, Apple is refusing to fully solve a fixable problem in order to artificially create a market in which to sell their solution.
  - y04nn 2y ago
    I should have made my point clear, but I'm referring to the tracking compatibility feature, that an airtag would be compatible for geolocation with the Android ecosystem and vice-versa toward building a global single tracking network instead of having 2 coexisting networks.
  - Arch-TK 2y ago
    "Apple and Google will continue to work with the Internet Engineering Task Force via the Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers working group to develop the official standard for this technology." IOW: "BigCorpA and BigCorpG will continue to work with Why Must This Task Force No Longer Focus On Progressing The Common Good And Instead Now Need To Focusing On Helping Try To Mitigate The Mess That Big Corps Are Causing via the Trying To Unfuck BigCorpA's Massive Privacy Oversight working group to develop an official standard which only BigCorpA and BigCorpG will have the resources to implement."
poszlem 2y ago
What truly bothers me as a user of both an iPhone, an airtag, and a Samsung, is the seemingly nonexistent option to "ignore this AirTag forever". I usually leave my iPhone at home, carrying my AirTag in my wallet. Yet, every day, I receive a notification about an AirTag tracking me. I wish there was a way to permanently disable this alert.
enhancer 2y ago
Just vote with your wallets and maybe they will come up with a better solution because clearly people use them in case of theft
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  No one will touch theft with a 40 foot pole because then they are effectively calling for vigilante justice and a confrontation is liable to escalate.
  - drozycki 2y ago
    Mayor Adams and the NYPD will https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/nypd-urges-citizens-to-buy-airtags-to-fight-surge-in-car-thefts/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/nypd-urges-citizens-...
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Mostly because GTA is a larger crime worth prosecuting, and there are like 4500 car thefts in NYC a year apparently. For bread and butter theft, a bike theft in this case, an owner tried to get the orange county sherriff involved. They managed to come to where the ping was hitting, knocked on the door, couldn't do anything, had to leave. The bike owner went vigilante in this case and took the bike back, forcing the orange county sherriff dept to release this statement: "As much as the convenience of technology plays a vital role in the quality of our lives, we want to remind our communities to utilize their local law enforcement services when they've been victimized by a crime instead of placing themselves into harm's way." "GPS tracking devices, like an "AirTag", are used for tracking property like bicycles, backpacks, etc. Putting such devices onto property items will help you locate those items if missing or stolen; however, pursuing its recovery in a vigilante manner because the GPS device depicts its location could place you into a physically dangerous predicament." https://abc7.com/ebike-theft-airtag-aliso-viejo/13091749/ https://abc7.com/ebike-theft-airtag-aliso-viejo/13091749/ For a point of reference on the policing culture in Orange County, they are currently running an ad campaign where they have "Crime doesn't pay in Orange County, you steal we prosecute" plastered on LA city and county busses. Its a little bit more active than other areas to say the least.
downWidOutaFite 2y ago
> AirTag, Find My accessory, or other industry specification-compatible Bluetooth tracker What is this other industry spec? > Chipolo, eufy, Jio, Motorola, and Pebblebee What about Tile?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
solardev 2y ago
I wish I could figure out how to configure my own trackers to stop beeping at me. I previously had an iPhone, but switched to an Android, and now my Airtags all think they're someone else's – even though they come home to the same place as my iPad and Mac every night. I can't figure out how to tell Apple they're actually mine, so they just keep randomly chiming in my backpack every few days... and my Android phone keeps warning me :(
- Bloating 2y ago
  It all belong to the fruit, including you
imwillofficial 2y ago
Excellent work teams. Now expand the tracking networks to each other's phones.
tristor 2y ago
As someone that duct-tapes hidden AirTags in my luggage (replacing former use of Tile, but AirTags have a bigger network and I use an iPhone) this is not good news for me. I have close to a 0% concern about stalkers, and I have a significant concern about thievery while traveling. I have an AirTag in my luggage, on my keychain, in my wallet, and in various other places /specifically/ to ensure that while traveling I can recover my belongings and deter thievery. This just ruined all of that.
- jerbear4328 2y ago
  Well, anti-stalking notifications for AirTags have existed on iPhones (and Androids with an app) since the beginning. This only adds built-in support to Androids as well. So, sorry to break it to you, but your system has always been set up to notify any thieves with an iPhone (or a free app installed). Anti-theft is an anti-goal for the AirTag, and, in my opinion, that is the correct choice, because vigilantism is really not a good idea. What would you do with the location of your stolen item? Report it to the police, they won't do anything, and you shouldn't go to that location, the risk isn't worth it.
  - matsemann 2y ago
    Vigilantism is a straw man, though. No one said anything about going to that location. And police being useless isn't necessarily a global phenomenon. Just knowing that you might be tracked when stealing would have been a massive deterrent. Now you know you can just hang out with the stuff you've stolen half an hour to see if it's tagged, and then take it home without repercussions.
- r00fus 2y ago
  AirTags explicitly claim they aren't for anti-theft. I use them to track my luggage so they don't get sent to the wrong airport, not to deter thievery. All the same I wonder how this will fare on airlines where many people are doing exactly your setup for their carry-ons.
harshaw 2y ago
I have two airtags on me at all time. So my wife can find my wallet or my keys. I have an android. The iPhone network is larger so Apple seems more useful. And I can do nothing about these alerts.
sneak 2y ago
This is only possible because the unique identifier that an AirTag transmits only rolls over once per day. This means with a network of trackers, it is possible to track the location of a single airtag over the course of a 24 hour period even if you aren’t the owner.
winterdeaf 2y ago
This is such a charade. Making "invisible" airtags is trivial [1], and I wouldn't be surprised if such airtags are being manufactured en-masse. We allowed the creation of a global tracking network under the false pretense of privacy. The entire Find My security model falls apart when considering "malicious" tags, and Apple knew about this from the start. [1]: https://github.com/Guinn-Partners/esp32-airtag https://github.com/Guinn-Partners/esp32-airtag
- foota 2y ago
  In that case, couldn't someone just make a tracker tag using GPS and a mobile connection?
  - emayljames 2y ago
    these devices are way more insidious though, a gps/mobile tracker would have more limitations due to it being less able to be hidden and less mobile.
  - wepple 2y ago
    GPS+mobile tracker: - 4x the cost plus ongoing fees - 2x larger - can’t buy it at any big box store - relies on a third party who can also see what you’re tracking - battery limited to weeks, not years Accessibility and features make these way more compelling
- PaulStatezny 2y ago
  Have you heard the term "defense in depth"? In the security world, it seems accepted that no security effort is a silver bullet that's 100% impossible to get around. Rather, it seems best practice to compose many layers of security efforts, which all work to raise the level of effort an attacker is required to exploit people. So I think it's unfair to say this is a charade.
gerdesj 2y ago
A German Uni's (Darmstadt) IT mob developed an app called AirGuard that has been doing tracking device monitoring for some years now. I have it running right now. Why on earth re-invent the wheel? A bunch of clever folk have been doing this for years.
- neilv 2y ago
  Thanks. People on GrapheneOS and who otherwise value open source can get it via F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.seemoo.at_tracking_detect...
  - gerdesj 2y ago
    "and who otherwise value open source" I hope that we can all applaud and value open source but the world is a mad place. Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection.release https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_t... I can't find an Apple version so I might suppose that either Apple's nose is out of joint with regards the name, or an Apple version was never released 8) In the end this is a very decent resource and it should have been covered off by phone floggers, years ago. It's rubbish that G and A are presenting this as something new that they have come up with.
    - kop316 2y ago
      My understanding is several OSS licenses are incompatible with publishing on the App Store: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8479/is-there-any-foundation-publishing-open-source-application-on-app-store-for-free https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8479/is-there...
The28thDuck 2y ago
It’s awesome that they are doing this, but doesn’t that incentivize people to use trackers that are not to that specification?
- theshrike79 2y ago
  People always worry about malicious tracking and conveniently forget that you could buy GPS+cellular trackers years and years ago. They are 100% undetectable and very precise. AirTags always need an iDevice to be close by to update their location.
  - wepple 2y ago
    > They are 100% undetectable Nit: they’re very very detectable, just not using your off the shelf phone.
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      If we assume it's hidden so well it can't be found visually and doesn't transmit data constantly (deep sleep for X minutes, get GPS fix, send location, GOTO 10) - how could it be found?
      - wepple 2y ago
        Heat signature. RF when it does transmit. If it’s hidden in a metal frame then it’s not going to get a good GNSS fix. And if you’re doing a deep sleep you’re powering down your GNSS module so not getting a proper warm fix.
xyst 2y ago
What about the unwanted tracking at browsers, within apps, across websites, device fingerprinting, and GPS triangulation? Oh wait, these companies need this to squeeze more ~~money~~ value out of paying customers.
crhulls 2y ago
CEO of Tile / Life360 here. We decided to opt out of the Google and Apple finding networks and the new proposed standards because it completely ruins the ability to use Bluetooth devices to deter theft. If you put an AirTag on say your bike, and thief steals it, they will get a notification and immediately just find and disable it. We actually built a (controversial) feature that lets you opt out of anti-stalking features if you scan a government ID. As of today, we have zero known instances of abuse—the friction of scanning an ID is enough to make a bad guy think twice, and a committed stalker can just go get an LTE-enabled stealth GPS device on Amazon. It is crazy that the press and regulators focus on Bluetooth devices when actual stalking devices are readily available. Some people are commenting on how small our network is. People don't realize that Life360 is on 1 in 8 phones in the US. We are huge outside of tech bubbles. If you are at an airport, mall, or anywhere with any meaningful density of people, our network is on par with the big guys. There is a J curve to the benefits of increasing density, and outside of rural areas we essentially have complete coverage. Beyond this, we just announced a new satellite-to-Bluetooth network this morning, and we plan to open it up to developers in 2025. It won't matter where you lose your stuff, we will be able to find it. And thieves won't. https://www.life360.com/find/ https://www.life360.com/find/
- imwillofficial 2y ago
  Never thought I'd go for a Tile, but you make a compelling case.
- WheatMillington 2y ago
  Personally I feel like the anti-theft nature of these devices is massively outweighed by the horrible outcomes of stalking and clandestine tracking. They're not a theft deterrent, in fact they're generally hidden so a thief has no idea it's there. And what are you going to do, show up with a posse to get your stuff back? The world would be better if tracking devices did not exist. It's a shame you've decided to actively reject anti-stalking features.
  - jaimex2 2y ago
    Try thinking before posting. You give the location of your missing property to the Police when stolen. Tile/Life360 is now a superior product while AirTags are basically useless paperweight. If you want to stalk someone you have always had numerous options including superior gps/cell based trackers.
ryukoposting 2y ago
"Specification-compatible" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. Sure, there are plenty of well-behaved companies making standards-compliant beacons, but there's nothing preventing proprietary approaches. Even with RPA it should be possible to implement "unwanted tracking" alerts for BT devices showing any given profile in their advertising data.
shermozle 2y ago
And here I was reading that headline and thinking it'd allow me to be notified when creepy adtech is stalking me. Of course not.
HumblyTossed 2y ago
So, why even bother with an Airtag then? I mean, they're useful in luggage and things that are easily stolen, so this just destroys any usefulness in that capacity. I bet you see a huge drop in Airtags being purchased.
- nexus7556 2y ago
  Its more than just theft. I've used airtags to find luggage misplaced (but not stolen) by airlines.
euniceee3 2y ago
Two points here: AirGuard provides tracker alerts without opting into any of the tracking networks. With Find My disabled, these Tracking alerts do not work.
Bloating 2y ago
Based on the forums comments there is so much stalking, that everyone is stalking someone. Or, is this just a Cali thing? At least it explains why the roads are so busy. Though, I thought everyone was working from home... which would make stalking yourself much easier.
xarope 2y ago
So if people are sticking these on valuable items, is the use case now for thieves to break into a house, wander around and be alerted when said valuable items (which are hidden or otherwise not obviously evident) are close by?
- janandonly 2y ago
  You've identified a great use case.
- antoniojtorres 2y ago
  I would hope the threshold that has to be crossed for the alert functionality to trigger is more than a few minutes of proximity. Both items would have to move to together to weed out false positives, otherwise you’d set everything off at an airport terminal…
- theshrike79 2y ago
  They would need to stay in the house quite a while to get the alert. They can't just go around the house waving a very expensive iPhone to find the items :D
- spuz 2y ago
  An alert will appear only when your phone and an Airtag have been moved to multiple locations together over the last few hours.
j16sdiz 2y ago
Can't the attacker(?) just buy a tracking device that don't implement this?
- sambazi 2y ago
  sure, but that's not the point
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  Kind of, in that traditional tracking device aren't aubject to this, but it's more expensive; you can't both leverage Apple or Google's network of devices as BT location receivers to track the target and “not implement this”, since this isn't something implemented by the tracking device but by the receiver networks.
majestic5762 2y ago
They want to be the only ones spying
nottorp 2y ago
Wait... are they alerting you about tracking that you don't want? Or are they tracking you even though you don't want it? And to nitpick, what kind of tracking do you actually want?
- emayljames 2y ago
  Basically this is to stop stalking, where a partner or stranger is using these devices to secretly track the victim.
ro_sharp 2y ago
Great, now I’ll get more than two or three of these every day just because I live in a mildly dense city centre…
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
phartenfeller 2y ago
I want a feature to save a tracker as unharmful. Friends of mine carry AirTags on their keys, and if I go for a walk with them, I get the tracker alert every time.
- ultrafez 2y ago
  Strange. It shouldn't alert you unless the AirTags aren't connected to their own phones - do they leave their phones behind when going for a walk?
jkestner 2y ago
I first read this as unwanted alert tracking. Like, I’d love to have my phone intelligently track and block unwanted alerts, from the apps and OS makers that spam me.
- Angostura 2y ago
  Swipe the alert and tap options. You can opt to never see it again, or mute it for as long as you want.
  - sneak 2y ago
    I think the issue is that disabling notifications entirely from an application is undesirable; applications (Uber, Starbucks, Walgreens) will send you advertising notifications, but if you disable all notifications for the app because it's spamming you, you don't get notified when your car arrives, your drink is ready for pickup, or that your prescription has been filled. It would be nice to be able to simply switch to a non-spammy vendor in that case, but that's not how the market works in the US.
  - jkestner 2y ago
    I still need some functional alerts, but not the upsells. And when I opt out of notifications, some apps (ahem, Substack) then regularly pop up a modal asking me to turn notifications on. I know what I said the first time, and the 10th, MFer.
chobytes 2y ago
Seems kind of pointless. The tech for tracking is widely available and straightforward to use. Has been for decades.
aaroninsf 2y ago
That's quite the garden path sentence.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Apple/Google will alert a computer if a potential Apple/Google competitor is tracking them. Makes one wonder who this is meant to benefit. The computer user or the company. Hence the term "unwanted" location tracking. The assumption made by Apple is that the computer user _wants_ Apple to track their locaton; the assumption by Google is that the computer user _wants_ Google to track their location. There will be no alert that Apple or Google are receiving location data. Why alert the computer user about something that they "want". It's the same ruse with Google or Apple providing ad blocking. The ad blocking feature will only interfere with ads that are not serviced through Apple or Google. Ads provided by Apple or Google shall remain unaffected. These companies are engaged in online ad services. Why would they protect the computer user from online ads and data collection that makes online ads more targeted. There will be tracking and there will be ads, along with an ongoing assumption that the computer _wants_ tracking and ads but only if provided by Apple or Google.

493 points by WalterSobchak 2y ago

I believe the title parses as "(unwanted tracking) alerts", and not "unwanted (tracking alerts)" as I read it initially.

codalan 2y ago

Going to be pretty funny when pranksters start putting airtags into places where they can't be found just to annoy people with unknown tracker alerts.

ChuckMcM 2y ago

This is great and it came up at dinner last night which is kind of weird. Had the odd experience of going to a retreat where everyone sat listening to speakers, and then all went to lunch, and then back to the speakers, then all to dinner, then back to the speakers. And my iPhone popped up an alert that there was an airtag following me. (It wasn't of course it was an airtag in another attendee's bag to track their bag which they had with them, near me kind of randomly, but being driven by the same forces of movement :-)).

larsnystrom 2y ago
I thought such notices wouldn’t appear as long as the AirTag owner’s iPhone was also near the AirTag? Maybe their battery died though.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  My wife fitted her luggage with AirTags but doesn't have an iPhone (just an iPad, normally turned off). The alerts I get are maddening, but I'd rather receive them than disable all alerting...
kstrauser 2y ago
My understanding is you should only get the notification if the tag isn't with its owner. That's how it plays out in my personal experience. Back when AirTags were completely broken and didn't support family sharing, I'd get notified if I had my wife's car keys with me only when she wasn't with me, i.e. because I grabbed hers to run a quick errand. This notification would be utterly useless if that were no longer the case: you'd spend half your time on a flight or bus ride closing the unwanted and unhelpful popups.
- rsstack 2y ago
  I use AirPods Pro but an Android phone. My girlfriend and friends we hung out with would complain about these, so I eventually found a way to turn off "Find my device" on the AirPods by connecting them to my iPad. I now can't track them but also people aren't mad at me for "tracking" them.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Huh, good point that I hadn’t considered.
  - beeboobaa3 2y ago
    Interesting. I've had Apple users recommend AirPods to me before, but I don't own any Apple devices so I already had a feeling it wouldn't work out. Would be insane if they would constantly be generating alerts on others their iPhones.
    - rsstack 2y ago
      I think if you use them out of the box, they won't generate the alerts. If I understand Apple's data model correctly, once I paired them to my iPad for the first time, they were enrolled to my iCloud account, and then the tracking system was enabled.
      - beeboobaa3 2y ago
        So I'm screwed if an iPhone user ever pairs with my headphones, i.e. when I lend them to them?
bryanlarsen 2y ago
Try chaperoning a bunch of kids on a field trip. Half of them have trackers attached to their backpacks, so you get a bunch of those notifications.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm still trying to make sense of this, at all. Lots of technobable flying around and no big picture talk. Why the fuck would Google and Apple work together on this AND trash their tech at the same time. Feels like they are trying to stave off regulation. Someone will find a way around this. It's too fun of a hack to go unanswered for more than a week. Now only the criminals will have this physical tracking ability (well,them and Apple+Google).

LorenDB 2y ago

It's interesting to see that Google takes this so seriously they're backporting it to Android 6. I guess they probably have metrics on what Android versions are still in active use, but I'm a little surprised that Android 6.0 would still be used heavily enough to warrant the backport. Regardless, it's good to see this sort of industry cooperation from companies who would normally be at each other's throats.

tantalor 2y ago
Supporting Android 6 would be like supporting iOS 9. Apple is only supporting latest version of iOS (17.5).
- runjake 2y ago
  > Supporting Android 6 would be like supporting iOS 9. 1. Your point still stands, but this is because this update is probably shipping as a Google Play Framework update, which works on >= 6.0. Google is not (to my knowledge) releasing a new firmware. Apple would do well to decouple certain software components from iOS, IMHO. 2. In case others are curious about iOS version market share, statcounter's stats for April 2024: 17.4 (current until today): 51% 17.3: 22% 16.6: 4.3% 16.7: 3.18% 16.1: 2.8% 16.3: 2.12% https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/ios/mobile-tablet/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/ios/mobil...
  - tjoff 2y ago
    Android 6: 0.79%
  - tadfisher 2y ago
    As a developer, that long tail of folks on the previous major version really sucks with fast-moving frameworks like SwiftUI. There's no way my company (a banking app) would drop 10% of customers, so we typically do N-1 for iOS support. Our Android app shipped almost 3 years ago with minSdk=24 (Android 6.0) and we haven't had to update it.

pompino 2y ago

> It’s possible the tracker is attached to an item the user is borrowing, but if not, iPhone can view the tracker’s identifier, have the tracker play a sound to help locate it, and access instructions to disable it. That means someone can steal your stuff, and then disable the tracker so you can't find it. Most people and myself included were sticking these cheap tags on everything we own, and it was genuinely useful during travel or in scenarios where theft was a consideration.

thebruce87m 2y ago
> That means someone can steal your stuff, and then disable the tracker so you can't find it. This is by design. AirTags were never marketed as an anti-theft device. They had anti-stalking features from day one which were/are at odds with anti-theft. It was marketed as helping you find things that are lost, nothing more.
- pompino 2y ago
  Design doesn't matter after a point - you have to meet your users on their turf. Most people were using it for other reasons - and if Apple's stance is, fine - don't buy it, then so be it.
  - asdfaoeu 2y ago
    There's two products here Bluetooth trackers and phones. People don't want to buy phones that expose themselves to tracking by other people.
    - pompino 2y ago
      Every phone is already being being tracked and logged. What youre really saying is that people often tolerate some tracking if done by CIA/phone company/Apple/Google/FB. We're just playing with semantics here. Tracking is either acceptable or not. The only real solution is to go off-grid.
      - 2y ago

exabrial 2y ago

Sigh. I get it there's been a few abuses of the technology... but it was literally already ripe for abuse anyway. Whether Apple intended this or not: The real world primary use case for AirTags is still tracking stolen crap. I would to _not_ want to alert thieves to the presence of an attached tracker in that case. I guess tracking your lost luggage is likely a #2, but if you were to survey what people were actually using them for, I'm betting it'd be #1 above. The only way I can think of solving this is allowing a silent mode on the tracker that requires both a private key from the user (to avoid getting NSL'd) and a private key from law enforcement (Apple / Google already have law enforcement portals) and finally one-way hashing the keys and publishing the results to a public irrevocable block ledger. One could see if your key was on the list to see if you Airtag was silenced, but you couldn't pick out specific tags that were silenced. The law enforcement agency's keys would also be hashed and published, allowing us some transparency on who is requesting the most tag silences, so we could monitor the monitors. If this were bundled up in a blockchain, and the tags were programmed only to act on a blockchain, we could avoid abuse and gain a useful feature.

happyopossum 2y ago
> Whether Apple intended this or not: The real world primary use case for AirTags is still tracking stolen crap. You're conflating your primary use case with the world's. 95% of the AirTags I'm aware of in the wild in both my family and friends are used for finding misplaced items - not stolen ones.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  Same thing.
  - AndrewDucker 2y ago
    A misplaced item I left in the office will not be following a third party about. And so will not be mistaken for stalking them.
- chankstein38 2y ago

jtbayly 2y ago

Wait, Google is literally the world's largest unwanted tracker, right? Are they going to alert Android users that they have been tracking them?

foepys 2y ago
I'd argue that Apple is operating on the same scale, at least regarding physical presence. Apple disallows disabling Bluetooth and WiFi easily because it allows them to track their air tags everywhere.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  They don’t “disallow” turning off Bluetooth easily. You can trivially do it via the settings app. The control panel pull down does it temporarily because that’s what most people want. 99.9% of people are turning off wifi because the wifi connection they currently have is acting up. So turning it back on tomorrow so the user doesn’t forget and ends up chewing through mobile data is the obvious best UX.
  - chatmasta 2y ago
    Nah, this is clearly a deliberate dark pattern from Apple. They could easily add a long-press option on the Bluetooth icon to fully disable it. But they don’t. My solution is a Shortcut to disable Bluetooth, triggered by a widget on my Home Screen. It’s annoying that I need to allocate space for that, but at least I can (actually) toggle Bluetooth without opening Settings.
    - sbuk 2y ago
      Clearly.
  - lapcat 2y ago
    Except that every single iOS update, including today's iOS 17.5, silently re-enables Bluetooth even after you specifically disable it in the Settings app. FB9992639 "Thank you for filing this feedback report. We reviewed your report and determined the behavior you experienced is currently functioning as intended."

cm2187 2y ago

Will be fun in a train full of passengers and tracked luggages moving all together.

sigwinch28 2y ago
At least for AirTags before today, this functionality allegedly only triggers when the device is not near one of the owner’s iPhones/iPad/Macbooks.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 2y ago
  Will be fun on a United plane full of passengers and tracked luggages moving all together. Happy?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

throwaway63467 2y ago

Will this work with malicious tags as well? I.e. tags that are designed to not communicate with a given phone but with other devices nearby? Can that be detected? My understanding is that regular tags will communicate with all phones, but maybe there’s a way to differentiate who to respond to or change identity for every ping? Not familiar with the exact protocol but basically many different tags near a phone wouldn’t trigger the warning, so if a tag can produce multiple identifiers that the adversary controls it could still evade detection?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
IshKebab 2y ago
There's some info about Apple's network here: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack?tab=readme-ov-file#how-does-apples-find-my-network-work https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack?tab=readme-ov-fil... Seems like in theory you could do that, though there are definitely heuristics you could apply to detect those tags, depending on how stealthy they are being. Also on the servers side Apple could just limit you to a reasonable number of tags.
winterdeaf 2y ago
As far as I am aware, there is no way to stop malicious tags without modifying the protocol to authenticate the messages being broadcast as originating form a genuine tag. [1] Making a tag that is not trackable is currently as easy as flipping a bit in the BLE advertisement. The same message is broadcast to all phones, but yes, a tag could also produce multiple identifiers and evade detection. [2] [1]: Section 8 of "Abuse-Resistant Location Tracking: Balancing Privacy and Safety in the Offline Finding Ecosystem". https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1332.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1332.pdf [2]: "Track You: A Deep Dive into Safety Alerts for Apple AirTags". https://petsymposium.org/popets/2023/popets-2023-0102.pdf https://petsymposium.org/popets/2023/popets-2023-0102.pdf
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  The broadcast isn't signed by some kind of hardware key?

Nevermark 2y ago

So if someone steals my luggage they can drive around with it until it alerts them and they turn my luggage tracker off? I am not complaining. What it amounts to, is that the digital world enables so much information gathering and using flexibility, we need fine grain permissions and controls for our devices and services, so they "do the right thing" for all kinds of corner cases. But we don't have an information infrastructure for that, so the best we can do is balance concerns.

LeoPanthera 2y ago
> So if someone steals my luggage they can drive around with it until it alerts them and they turn my luggage tracker off? It's a common misconception that Airtags and similar products are designed to help you locate stolen items. They not. "Tracker on stolen device" and "Tracker planted for the purposes of stalking" are indistinguishable situations. They're to help you find things that you lost. They're amazing for that. They're sometimes helpful for finding stolen things too, but that is a side-effect.
- Nevermark 2y ago
  Tracking possessions and tracking people are easily distinguishable as tasks. One is highly useful and moral, the other is highly immoral and potentially destructive. But we don’t have an information infrastructure that lets tech understand the difference yet. That was my point. I think I made it clearly.

LeoPanthera 2y ago

I'd like to repost this as a top-level comment because a lot of people are complaining about the same thing: It's a common misconception that Airtags and similar products are designed to help you locate stolen items. They not. "Tracker on stolen device" and "Tracker planted for the purposes of stalking" are indistinguishable situations. They're to help you find things that you lost. They're amazing for that. They're sometimes helpful for finding stolen things too, but that is a side-effect.

melodyogonna 2y ago

[dead]

gnicholas 2y ago

Will this affect battery life? I can see how Apple's proprietary AirTags don't affect battery (of smartphones around them) much, but if they're trying to detect other companies' trackers it seems less likely that the battery impact is quite so minimal.

AndrewDucker 2y ago
It's exactly the same protocol. That's the point.

AndrewDucker 2y ago

Annoyingly, though, you can't get a device that is trackable on both iPhone and Android networks. Which is annoying, because I have an Android and my wife has an iPhone, and it would be nice to be able to both track the same objects.

gnicholas 2y ago
Aren't there third-party devices like Tile that you could use? Sure, it can't be tracked by every iOS and Android device, but it's not like there aren't trackers that you and your wife could both use.
- AndrewDucker 2y ago
  True, there are devices that work with both. But they use their own, much smaller, tracking network, rather than having one ubiquitous network.
  - hanniabu 2y ago
    How does the tracking network size affect functionality?
    - Jtsummers 2y ago
      > How does the tracking network size affect functionality? Ability to actually find lost items. AirTags are so successful (in the US) because of the ubiquity of iPhones which are, effectively, constantly reporting on the location of detected devices. A smaller network of listening/reporting devices will not be as effective unless it happens to be very popular right in the area the device was lost.
    - mplewis 2y ago
      If there are more devices that can see your stolen device, there is a higher likelihood you will be able to track your stolen device.
    - ihuman 2y ago

notfed 2y ago

I'm pretty sure my neighbors are getting tracking alerts for my airtag in my house. The speaker keeps going off. They're 70 years old. I'm sure seeing "AirTag found moving with you" is confusing them and possibly freaking them out. I bought the airtag for my dog, but now am having second thoughts, I'm just imagining all the freakouts I'll cause when walking on trails.

Jtsummers 2y ago
> I'm just imagining all the freakouts I'll cause when walking on trails. You'd have to follow someone for 30+ minutes without your phone (or other device if you paired it with something else) nearby.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Seems pretty easy to do on popular urban trails to be honest. Some of the trails in my town have a group of people every like 30 feet and its pretty easy to end up keeping pace with them the entire hike unless you walk faster and pass them up.
lanewinfield 2y ago
If I'm not mistaken, you have to be actually traveling (i.e. beyond the house) with an unknown airtag for it to start alerting you. If your neighbors are not traveling with you places, it's probably not what's going on.
- Kronopath 2y ago
  Yes, but it’s not always perfect. I’ve been notified of an “unknown AirTag” while I was home. When I checked the locations it was seen with me, it was a random zigzag within a block or two of my home. I’m pretty sure what happened is that the AirTag belonged to one of my neighbours, there were some GPS distortions happening that made my phone think it was moving slightly, it kept hearing the AirTag’s signal, and it assumed I was being stalked while wandering near home. This person might have the same thing happening to them.

perfmode 2y ago

It's beautiful when we can cross boundaries and agree on fundamental goods that benefit us all collectively.

doublerabbit 2y ago
But of course, no messaging. They would rather let us fight for that.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  WhatsApp/signal/telegram/Discord/MMS/snapchat/etc
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    America masquerading as a class-free society doesn't address people's desire to have a class-based society, so they seek that freedom where they can
- LVB 2y ago
  I think we’re slowly getting there, right? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38293082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38293082

y04nn 2y ago

You know what would be even better? That they agree on a common standard for interoperability between both systems. They both work in the similar way and do the same thing, this would be great to have a standard.

happyopossum 2y ago
FTA: “Apple and Google have worked together to create an industry specification” … “Apple and Google will continue to work with the Internet Engineering Task Force via the Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers working group to develop the official standard for this technology.” That’s what is happening here. I’m not sure why people are always quick to assume negatives without doing even the most cursory reading of linked articles.
- talldayo 2y ago
  I think the problem they're referring to is that we're being dragged through this brouhaha to stop an unintended side-effect from a proprietary network. In an ideal world Android users can detect unwanted Airtags because the protocol is documented and open. In the world we live in, Google has to go out of their way to solve problems Apple is inventing for them. The only possible interpretation of this is that Apple knows their current system wouldn't survive antitrust inquiries. So they're making a pathetically marginal concession ("well we did let you track the hostile users!") to cement the rationale of a pointlessly insular system. Once again, Apple is refusing to fully solve a fixable problem in order to artificially create a market in which to sell their solution.
- y04nn 2y ago
  I should have made my point clear, but I'm referring to the tracking compatibility feature, that an airtag would be compatible for geolocation with the Android ecosystem and vice-versa toward building a global single tracking network instead of having 2 coexisting networks.
- Arch-TK 2y ago
  "Apple and Google will continue to work with the Internet Engineering Task Force via the Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers working group to develop the official standard for this technology." IOW: "BigCorpA and BigCorpG will continue to work with Why Must This Task Force No Longer Focus On Progressing The Common Good And Instead Now Need To Focusing On Helping Try To Mitigate The Mess That Big Corps Are Causing via the Trying To Unfuck BigCorpA's Massive Privacy Oversight working group to develop an official standard which only BigCorpA and BigCorpG will have the resources to implement."

poszlem 2y ago

What truly bothers me as a user of both an iPhone, an airtag, and a Samsung, is the seemingly nonexistent option to "ignore this AirTag forever". I usually leave my iPhone at home, carrying my AirTag in my wallet. Yet, every day, I receive a notification about an AirTag tracking me. I wish there was a way to permanently disable this alert.

enhancer 2y ago

Just vote with your wallets and maybe they will come up with a better solution because clearly people use them in case of theft

kjkjadksj 2y ago
No one will touch theft with a 40 foot pole because then they are effectively calling for vigilante justice and a confrontation is liable to escalate.
- drozycki 2y ago
  Mayor Adams and the NYPD will https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/nypd-urges-citizens-to-buy-airtags-to-fight-surge-in-car-thefts/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/05/nypd-urges-citizens-...
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Mostly because GTA is a larger crime worth prosecuting, and there are like 4500 car thefts in NYC a year apparently. For bread and butter theft, a bike theft in this case, an owner tried to get the orange county sherriff involved. They managed to come to where the ping was hitting, knocked on the door, couldn't do anything, had to leave. The bike owner went vigilante in this case and took the bike back, forcing the orange county sherriff dept to release this statement: "As much as the convenience of technology plays a vital role in the quality of our lives, we want to remind our communities to utilize their local law enforcement services when they've been victimized by a crime instead of placing themselves into harm's way." "GPS tracking devices, like an "AirTag", are used for tracking property like bicycles, backpacks, etc. Putting such devices onto property items will help you locate those items if missing or stolen; however, pursuing its recovery in a vigilante manner because the GPS device depicts its location could place you into a physically dangerous predicament." https://abc7.com/ebike-theft-airtag-aliso-viejo/13091749/ https://abc7.com/ebike-theft-airtag-aliso-viejo/13091749/ For a point of reference on the policing culture in Orange County, they are currently running an ad campaign where they have "Crime doesn't pay in Orange County, you steal we prosecute" plastered on LA city and county busses. Its a little bit more active than other areas to say the least.

downWidOutaFite 2y ago

> AirTag, Find My accessory, or other industry specification-compatible Bluetooth tracker What is this other industry spec? > Chipolo, eufy, Jio, Motorola, and Pebblebee What about Tile?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

solardev 2y ago

I wish I could figure out how to configure my own trackers to stop beeping at me. I previously had an iPhone, but switched to an Android, and now my Airtags all think they're someone else's – even though they come home to the same place as my iPad and Mac every night. I can't figure out how to tell Apple they're actually mine, so they just keep randomly chiming in my backpack every few days... and my Android phone keeps warning me :(

Bloating 2y ago
It all belong to the fruit, including you

imwillofficial 2y ago

Excellent work teams. Now expand the tracking networks to each other's phones.

tristor 2y ago

As someone that duct-tapes hidden AirTags in my luggage (replacing former use of Tile, but AirTags have a bigger network and I use an iPhone) this is not good news for me. I have close to a 0% concern about stalkers, and I have a significant concern about thievery while traveling. I have an AirTag in my luggage, on my keychain, in my wallet, and in various other places /specifically/ to ensure that while traveling I can recover my belongings and deter thievery. This just ruined all of that.

jerbear4328 2y ago
Well, anti-stalking notifications for AirTags have existed on iPhones (and Androids with an app) since the beginning. This only adds built-in support to Androids as well. So, sorry to break it to you, but your system has always been set up to notify any thieves with an iPhone (or a free app installed). Anti-theft is an anti-goal for the AirTag, and, in my opinion, that is the correct choice, because vigilantism is really not a good idea. What would you do with the location of your stolen item? Report it to the police, they won't do anything, and you shouldn't go to that location, the risk isn't worth it.
- matsemann 2y ago
  Vigilantism is a straw man, though. No one said anything about going to that location. And police being useless isn't necessarily a global phenomenon. Just knowing that you might be tracked when stealing would have been a massive deterrent. Now you know you can just hang out with the stuff you've stolen half an hour to see if it's tagged, and then take it home without repercussions.
r00fus 2y ago
AirTags explicitly claim they aren't for anti-theft. I use them to track my luggage so they don't get sent to the wrong airport, not to deter thievery. All the same I wonder how this will fare on airlines where many people are doing exactly your setup for their carry-ons.

harshaw 2y ago

I have two airtags on me at all time. So my wife can find my wallet or my keys. I have an android. The iPhone network is larger so Apple seems more useful. And I can do nothing about these alerts.

sneak 2y ago

This is only possible because the unique identifier that an AirTag transmits only rolls over once per day. This means with a network of trackers, it is possible to track the location of a single airtag over the course of a 24 hour period even if you aren’t the owner.

winterdeaf 2y ago

This is such a charade. Making "invisible" airtags is trivial [1], and I wouldn't be surprised if such airtags are being manufactured en-masse. We allowed the creation of a global tracking network under the false pretense of privacy. The entire Find My security model falls apart when considering "malicious" tags, and Apple knew about this from the start. [1]: https://github.com/Guinn-Partners/esp32-airtag https://github.com/Guinn-Partners/esp32-airtag

foota 2y ago
In that case, couldn't someone just make a tracker tag using GPS and a mobile connection?
- emayljames 2y ago
  these devices are way more insidious though, a gps/mobile tracker would have more limitations due to it being less able to be hidden and less mobile.
- wepple 2y ago
  GPS+mobile tracker: - 4x the cost plus ongoing fees - 2x larger - can’t buy it at any big box store - relies on a third party who can also see what you’re tracking - battery limited to weeks, not years Accessibility and features make these way more compelling
PaulStatezny 2y ago
Have you heard the term "defense in depth"? In the security world, it seems accepted that no security effort is a silver bullet that's 100% impossible to get around. Rather, it seems best practice to compose many layers of security efforts, which all work to raise the level of effort an attacker is required to exploit people. So I think it's unfair to say this is a charade.

gerdesj 2y ago

A German Uni's (Darmstadt) IT mob developed an app called AirGuard that has been doing tracking device monitoring for some years now. I have it running right now. Why on earth re-invent the wheel? A bunch of clever folk have been doing this for years.

neilv 2y ago
Thanks. People on GrapheneOS and who otherwise value open source can get it via F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.seemoo.at_tracking_detect...
- gerdesj 2y ago
  "and who otherwise value open source" I hope that we can all applaud and value open source but the world is a mad place. Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection.release https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_t... I can't find an Apple version so I might suppose that either Apple's nose is out of joint with regards the name, or an Apple version was never released 8) In the end this is a very decent resource and it should have been covered off by phone floggers, years ago. It's rubbish that G and A are presenting this as something new that they have come up with.
  - kop316 2y ago
    My understanding is several OSS licenses are incompatible with publishing on the App Store: https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8479/is-there-any-foundation-publishing-open-source-application-on-app-store-for-free https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/8479/is-there...

The28thDuck 2y ago

It’s awesome that they are doing this, but doesn’t that incentivize people to use trackers that are not to that specification?

theshrike79 2y ago
People always worry about malicious tracking and conveniently forget that you could buy GPS+cellular trackers years and years ago. They are 100% undetectable and very precise. AirTags always need an iDevice to be close by to update their location.
- wepple 2y ago
  > They are 100% undetectable Nit: they’re very very detectable, just not using your off the shelf phone.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    If we assume it's hidden so well it can't be found visually and doesn't transmit data constantly (deep sleep for X minutes, get GPS fix, send location, GOTO 10) - how could it be found?
    - wepple 2y ago
      Heat signature. RF when it does transmit. If it’s hidden in a metal frame then it’s not going to get a good GNSS fix. And if you’re doing a deep sleep you’re powering down your GNSS module so not getting a proper warm fix.

xyst 2y ago

What about the unwanted tracking at browsers, within apps, across websites, device fingerprinting, and GPS triangulation? Oh wait, these companies need this to squeeze more ~~money~~ value out of paying customers.

crhulls 2y ago

CEO of Tile / Life360 here. We decided to opt out of the Google and Apple finding networks and the new proposed standards because it completely ruins the ability to use Bluetooth devices to deter theft. If you put an AirTag on say your bike, and thief steals it, they will get a notification and immediately just find and disable it. We actually built a (controversial) feature that lets you opt out of anti-stalking features if you scan a government ID. As of today, we have zero known instances of abuse—the friction of scanning an ID is enough to make a bad guy think twice, and a committed stalker can just go get an LTE-enabled stealth GPS device on Amazon. It is crazy that the press and regulators focus on Bluetooth devices when actual stalking devices are readily available. Some people are commenting on how small our network is. People don't realize that Life360 is on 1 in 8 phones in the US. We are huge outside of tech bubbles. If you are at an airport, mall, or anywhere with any meaningful density of people, our network is on par with the big guys. There is a J curve to the benefits of increasing density, and outside of rural areas we essentially have complete coverage. Beyond this, we just announced a new satellite-to-Bluetooth network this morning, and we plan to open it up to developers in 2025. It won't matter where you lose your stuff, we will be able to find it. And thieves won't. https://www.life360.com/find/ https://www.life360.com/find/

imwillofficial 2y ago
Never thought I'd go for a Tile, but you make a compelling case.
WheatMillington 2y ago
Personally I feel like the anti-theft nature of these devices is massively outweighed by the horrible outcomes of stalking and clandestine tracking. They're not a theft deterrent, in fact they're generally hidden so a thief has no idea it's there. And what are you going to do, show up with a posse to get your stuff back? The world would be better if tracking devices did not exist. It's a shame you've decided to actively reject anti-stalking features.
- jaimex2 2y ago
  Try thinking before posting. You give the location of your missing property to the Police when stolen. Tile/Life360 is now a superior product while AirTags are basically useless paperweight. If you want to stalk someone you have always had numerous options including superior gps/cell based trackers.

ryukoposting 2y ago

"Specification-compatible" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. Sure, there are plenty of well-behaved companies making standards-compliant beacons, but there's nothing preventing proprietary approaches. Even with RPA it should be possible to implement "unwanted tracking" alerts for BT devices showing any given profile in their advertising data.

shermozle 2y ago

And here I was reading that headline and thinking it'd allow me to be notified when creepy adtech is stalking me. Of course not.

HumblyTossed 2y ago

So, why even bother with an Airtag then? I mean, they're useful in luggage and things that are easily stolen, so this just destroys any usefulness in that capacity. I bet you see a huge drop in Airtags being purchased.

nexus7556 2y ago
Its more than just theft. I've used airtags to find luggage misplaced (but not stolen) by airlines.

euniceee3 2y ago

Two points here: AirGuard provides tracker alerts without opting into any of the tracking networks. With Find My disabled, these Tracking alerts do not work.

Bloating 2y ago

Based on the forums comments there is so much stalking, that everyone is stalking someone. Or, is this just a Cali thing? At least it explains why the roads are so busy. Though, I thought everyone was working from home... which would make stalking yourself much easier.

xarope 2y ago

So if people are sticking these on valuable items, is the use case now for thieves to break into a house, wander around and be alerted when said valuable items (which are hidden or otherwise not obviously evident) are close by?

janandonly 2y ago
You've identified a great use case.
antoniojtorres 2y ago
I would hope the threshold that has to be crossed for the alert functionality to trigger is more than a few minutes of proximity. Both items would have to move to together to weed out false positives, otherwise you’d set everything off at an airport terminal…
theshrike79 2y ago
They would need to stay in the house quite a while to get the alert. They can't just go around the house waving a very expensive iPhone to find the items :D
spuz 2y ago
An alert will appear only when your phone and an Airtag have been moved to multiple locations together over the last few hours.

j16sdiz 2y ago

Can't the attacker(?) just buy a tracking device that don't implement this?

sambazi 2y ago
sure, but that's not the point
dragonwriter 2y ago
Kind of, in that traditional tracking device aren't aubject to this, but it's more expensive; you can't both leverage Apple or Google's network of devices as BT location receivers to track the target and “not implement this”, since this isn't something implemented by the tracking device but by the receiver networks.

majestic5762 2y ago

They want to be the only ones spying

nottorp 2y ago

Wait... are they alerting you about tracking that you don't want? Or are they tracking you even though you don't want it? And to nitpick, what kind of tracking do you actually want?

emayljames 2y ago
Basically this is to stop stalking, where a partner or stranger is using these devices to secretly track the victim.

ro_sharp 2y ago

Great, now I’ll get more than two or three of these every day just because I live in a mildly dense city centre…

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

phartenfeller 2y ago

I want a feature to save a tracker as unharmful. Friends of mine carry AirTags on their keys, and if I go for a walk with them, I get the tracker alert every time.

ultrafez 2y ago
Strange. It shouldn't alert you unless the AirTags aren't connected to their own phones - do they leave their phones behind when going for a walk?

jkestner 2y ago

I first read this as unwanted alert tracking. Like, I’d love to have my phone intelligently track and block unwanted alerts, from the apps and OS makers that spam me.

Angostura 2y ago
Swipe the alert and tap options. You can opt to never see it again, or mute it for as long as you want.
- sneak 2y ago
  I think the issue is that disabling notifications entirely from an application is undesirable; applications (Uber, Starbucks, Walgreens) will send you advertising notifications, but if you disable all notifications for the app because it's spamming you, you don't get notified when your car arrives, your drink is ready for pickup, or that your prescription has been filled. It would be nice to be able to simply switch to a non-spammy vendor in that case, but that's not how the market works in the US.
- jkestner 2y ago
  I still need some functional alerts, but not the upsells. And when I opt out of notifications, some apps (ahem, Substack) then regularly pop up a modal asking me to turn notifications on. I know what I said the first time, and the 10th, MFer.

chobytes 2y ago

Seems kind of pointless. The tech for tracking is widely available and straightforward to use. Has been for decades.

aaroninsf 2y ago

That's quite the garden path sentence.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Apple/Google will alert a computer if a potential Apple/Google competitor is tracking them. Makes one wonder who this is meant to benefit. The computer user or the company. Hence the term "unwanted" location tracking. The assumption made by Apple is that the computer user _wants_ Apple to track their locaton; the assumption by Google is that the computer user _wants_ Google to track their location. There will be no alert that Apple or Google are receiving location data. Why alert the computer user about something that they "want". It's the same ruse with Google or Apple providing ad blocking. The ad blocking feature will only interfere with ads that are not serviced through Apple or Google. Ads provided by Apple or Google shall remain unaffected. These companies are engaged in online ad services. Why would they protect the computer user from online ads and data collection that makes online ads more targeted. There will be tracking and there will be ads, along with an ongoing assumption that the computer _wants_ tracking and ads but only if provided by Apple or Google.