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Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag
I developed a device that turns an Airtag on and off at specific intervals.
Current Airtags are detectable right away and cannot be used to track stolen property. That device allows you to hide an Airtag in your car, for example, and someone that steals your car will not be able to use some app to detect it.
The Airtag will also not warn the thief of its presence. After some hours, the Airtag turns on again and you can find out its location. It’s not foolproof, as the timing has to be right, but still useful.
What do you think?
- givinguflac 1y agoVery cool idea, and I love how compact it is! My only feedback would be re: the site, specifically this part: “ Airtag is a trademark registered by apple and we have nothing to do with apple.” Might want to capitalize Apple; just a nitpick.
- pompidoo 1y agoGood catch! Thank you I will correct it now.
- wanderer2323 1y agoYou have also developed a device that allows people to use AirTags for stalking.
- _QrE 1y agoThis. Normal AirTags are just fine for tracking your stuff. > "(thiefs use apps to locate AirTags around, and AirTags will warn the thief if an unknown AirTag is travelling with them, for example if they steal your car)" The reason this was introduced is exactly because people used AirTags to stalk others. Advertising that your product turns that off is basically targeting that specific demographic.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Ajedi32 1y agoThat's true. But the advertised use case (tracking stolen items) is perfectly valid.
- atoav 1y ago[flagged]
- andygeorge 1y agoyup. it unfortunately works well in the gun industry
- int_19h 1y agoFWIW the vast majority of guns sold to civilians never get discharged at anything other than pieces of paper. (And quite a few never get used at all - "safe queen" is a well-established term for a reason.)
- bigstrat2003 1y agoAnd you can use hammers to brutally murder people as well as to drive in nails. You can use a screwdriver to grievously wound someone besides using it to repair your glasses. The fact that a tool can be used for bad things does not negate the good things it can be used for. Nor does it mean that the maker is responsible if someone chooses to use it for bad things.
- andygeorge 1y ago'the gun' by cj chivers is an excellent read, i suggest checking it out
- fortran77 1y agoA machine that crushes orphrans[sic]? Shut up and take my money.
- pompidoo 1y agoAs it's 4 hours off / 1 hour on, the device is not very suitable for stalking someone. Also once the AirTag is back on and the person starts moving, they will be alerted that the AirTag is tracking them.
- schmichael 1y agoThat’s perfect for finding out where someone lives. Drop it in their bag or jacket at a concert/bar/work/whatever-in-the-evening, and the place they’re likely at in 4 hours is their home. Not trying to be creepy, I’m just trying to demonstrate how we all need to think like adversaries (eg creeps) when designing products.
- fn-mote 1y agoYou can probably find out where they live from knowing their name. This application is not a high level of stalking.
- schmichael 1y agoThe concert/bar example allows stalking without knowing someone’s name.
- andygeorge 1y ago> not a high level of stalking imo no level of stalking is appropriate. while this device might not do everything a stalker wants it to, it surely makes it easier for them
- hangonhn 1y agoThat's not true in all scenarios. I once donated an infant car seat to a coworker but forgot I had put an AirTag on it. After she had taken it home, her iPhone told there was an unknown AirTag and she texted me. I apologized profusely and she wasn't bothered by it. Nonetheless had I been nefarious, I would have been able to get her home address.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cryptonector 1y agoAirTags are already that. There's videos on YouTube on how to disconnect the speaker that allows AirTags to warn the stalking victim.
- cmeacham98 1y ago> Events outside our control, such as Apple updating the firmware in the future to prevent the device from working, will not qualify for a refund. I fully understand why you would want to do this, but as a consumer I would never buy this product with this clause.
- dudeinjapan 1y agoA reasonable solution would be to get to buy the newer model half-off if this happens. Obviously the maker can’t just have his entire biz nuked with refunds if Apple happens to update firmware.
- mulmen 1y agoI think you have your priorities wrong. Why should an unsustainable business be prioritized over consumer benefit? Nobody has a right to a successful business but when consumers can trust their purchases they are more likely to make additional purchases.
- _aavaa_ 1y agoThe lack of trust in the purchase comes from Apple, not from this seller. It's apple that's reaching into your device and force updating the firmware without your consent.
- mulmen 1y agoNo. The product in this case relies on unintended functionality in a specific firmware version of an Apple device that is specifically designed to not be suitable for this application. In this case it is the add-on device that is not offering refunds if it stops working.
- _aavaa_ 1y agoYes. > if it stops working. It doesn't magically stop working though, it would be apple explicitly putting in effort to break this functionality and forcing you to update a device you own, forcing you to use it only how they want you to use it.
- hollow-moe 1y ago[flagged]
- pompidoo 1y agoThe Airtag is mostly off and when back on will alert the person.
- Ajedi32 1y ago> You shouldn't go get back your belongings from a thief anyways. And the police shouldn't either? Seems like knowing the location of your stolen property would help with getting it back in most cases.
- 1propionyl 1y agoIn practice it does not. If you have had something with FindMy tracking stolen you may know what apartment block it's in, but not what unit. Police won't or can't do anything if it could be in multiple units or would require any kind of warrant for the building as well as the specific unit you think it's in. If you're "lucky" some might chaperone you knocking yourself, which itself is not something most want to entertain. On account of police policy, AirTags are effectively useless for actually getting anything stolen back. You'll get more use out of them in filing your insurance claim if the theft of the item is covered under for example your homeowner's insurance policy.
- Ajedi32 1y agoThat's only a problem if the stolen property is in an apartment and not a house or driveway. And even in the apartment case it could probably be used in combination with other evidence (if available) to obtain a warrant, though you're correct that in practice police don't often have the bandwidth to investigate property crimes to that degree.
- ops 1y agoThis depends on where you are. In Florida, the police will absolutely go get your stolen property if you give them an AirTag location.
- pimlottc 1y agoWouldn't this also greatly reduce the reliability of tracking, especially in rural areas where there might not always be a Find My network device nearby?
- pompidoo 1y agoYes, unfortunately it would.
- subscribed 1y agoIn rural areas you're always better off with gps+lte+LoRA tracker anyways.
- Nemley 1y ago[dead]
- cinntaile 1y agoCan the time interval be changed by the user or is it hardcoded? What are the limits if they can be changed?
- pompidoo 1y agohardcoded, but I'm thinking of offering different time intervals in the future
- andygeorge 1y ago> offering different time intervals your previous response to the stalking concerns was "it's 4 hours off / 1 hour on, the device is not very suitable for stalking someone"; wouldn't this comment - allowing that to change - then make it even easier for stalkers?
- pompidoo 1y agoWell it would warn the person that they are being tracked when the airtag turns back on, so I feel like any other tracker would be better suited for stalking people, and most of the time it wouldn't even track.
- mulmen 1y agoAirTags aren’t meant to get stolen items back. That just isn’t the use case. How does this compare to actual GPS trackers like https://monimoto.com/ https://monimoto.com/?
- lostlogin 1y agoThat device you link to is more expensive but would never alert the person being stalked, so I suppose that might justify the price.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RandallBrown 1y agoIt's about 10x the size and 4-5x the price. Probably worth it for a vehicle, but maybe not for a backpack.
- wepple 1y agoProblems: if the thief steals your item while the AirTag is on, they can find and disable it. Have you experimented with a setup (more complicated to package) where you have two AirTags and alternately power one at a time? Could that bypass apples detection whilst also broadcasting location? Edit: at sufficiently small time durations to run under apples detection radar, but for long enough to be picked up as a location I don’t know how Apple detects the tracking; this would easily be solved by them.
- pompidoo 1y agoYes I think having 2 is a good strategy. I'm also considering offering different timings in the future.
- gojomo 1y agoAfter I saw third-party "10 year battery enclosure" offerings for AirTags, was wondering when other workaround customizations like this might appear. Other impactful variants might be: * senses whether another 'sibling' AirTag is present, if so, stays off. If not, waits X hours & then turns on. * has its own motion sensor; only after X minutes of being stationary, it waits Y hours to turn on briefly * has its own clock & (original-user-known) randomization seed; turns on at pseudorandom intervals the original user can predict * low-power/low-bandwidth receivers so cheap & tiny now: could wait for national or even global unit-specific 'wake' request - perhaps even with parameters for duration/intervals – before powering-on AirTag portion
- Gys 1y ago> Events outside our control, such as Apple updating the firmware in the future to prevent the device from working There are several much cheaper nock offs that inherently will never update the firmware. Why not support those? And just to be sure, offer a package deal, include such tracker.
- Gibbon1 1y agoA while ago saw someone who was working in the tracking space said the following. For stolen items you don't want to track them. You want to be able to ask them where they are. The advantage is you can make a locator that doesn't reveal itself by transmitting. And it doesn't waste power receiving gps signals. You could literally have a device that runs for years on a AA battery. The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.
- xmodem 1y ago> You want to be able to ask them where they are. Through what presently-existing technology, exactly, is this idea supposed to work over distances greater than at best a couple of miles with say LoRA? > The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data. I'm not equipped to analyse their claims in detail, but Apple claims the design of their find-my network is end-to-end encrypted, and presumably it would be a huge scandal if this turned out to be a massive lie.
- stavros 1y agoIt is end-to-end encrypted, yes. The protocol has been widely reverse-engineered and Apple can't actually read your item's location at all. It's pretty clever.
- Animats 1y agoThat's how classic Lojack worked. Lojack is a car theft detection device. It's not GPS based. It's hidden somewhere on the vehicle and connected to power. It listens to FM broadcast radio stations until it finds one with the Lojack subcarrier, something Lojack licensed from radio stations in most cities. It decodes the subcarrier, listening for serial numbers of Lojack units that have been stolen. Then it starts transmitting. It doesn't transmit location, just its serial number. Police cars equipped with Lojack receivers get an indication of direction and distance. Lojack had an effort to equip police cars with the equipment. At peak, LoJack had coverage in parts of 29 states. It was very effective. 98% recovery rate.
- ale42 1y agoHalf-related question: the chip on the board looks like an STM32 microcontroller, wouldn't a 6-pin 8-bit PIC10 or similar µC be sufficient and cheaper for the purpose? And possibly use less power, a PIC10F322 in sleep mode with the watchdog timer enabled is around 0.5 µA, while a small STM32 is more in the 100 µA range in the best case.
- zxcvgm 1y agoProbably. Or something like the TPL5110 might actually suffice, purpose-built timer for power gating at 35nA, but only goes up to 2hr at max.
- ale42 1y agoNice, didn't know this one! This combined with a PIC10 without watchdog timer might also be an interesting combination to do more complex things. Or perhaps simply a TPL5110 with a ultra-low-power flip-flop (does it even exist?) used as a divider to get to 4 hours.
- alnwlsn 1y agoI was wondering why an MCU with so many pins was used. Maybe it was picked for the total package height?
- turtlebits 1y agoIf its not foolproof, how do you provide any peace of mind that this actually works? Where do you get your 95% number from? If the stolen item isn't able to be found (ie the airtag was removed), do you provide some refund?
- anonymousiam 1y agoA poor workaround to a problem created by unnecessary restrictions. Stalking is already illegal, so why are the tags crippled in the first place? This "feature" severely limits the usefulness of tags for tracking stolen items. Why not just sell some tags that don't alert everyone to their presence? Police and intelligence agencies have those already, so who are we protecting?
- pavel_lishin 1y agoBreaking and entering is already illegal, why do people sell locks?
- anonymousiam 1y agoLike tags, locks are also deliberately encumbered so that locksmiths and law enforcement can easily defeat them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5jzHw3lXCQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5jzHw3lXCQ
- somanyphotons 1y agoAre there people out there who sell locks that aren't purposefully bad?
- itsanaccount 1y agoyou ask great questions about power! and yes. though you'll generally find the lock isn't the interesting bit, reinforcing the door frame and door and putting pins at the top/bottom and side is how its done. otherwise 25 dollars at TSC for a fence post driver will make 95% of residential entryways irrelevant.
- HenryBemis 1y agoPeople like Microsoft? https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28691191/Why-did-Microsoft-weaken-Bitlocker.html https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28691191/Why-did-... EDIT: Like in the hotels, you got a key for your room, but the hotel management has a "passpartout" key (for back in the day when we had physical keys). The phrase "<thing> must accept interference, but not cause any". So you/we must be able to receive the 'punch' and not resist.
- RomanPushkin 1y agoTile already has this feature. You need to pass verification to use it, but it stays undetectable. However, if you got caught stalking somebody you have to pay $1M fine.
- thih9 1y agoIt’s arguably pointless. > despite the absence of the device on Tile’s app, it can still be tracked and located through other means available on the device. > Tile Tracker with Anti-Theft mode has a static Mac-Address, which may make it even more trackable https://techryptic.github.io/2023/03/11/Tile-Anti-Theft-Mode-Separating-Hype-From-Reality/ https://techryptic.github.io/2023/03/11/Tile-Anti-Theft-Mode...
- wkat4242 1y agoAlso, tile has a really useless network. I marked mine lost and carried it through a busy city for a month until it got picked up :P It's probably because the only people using the app are those that bought one and they're not very common here in Europe. With Apple's, Samsung's and Google's network most phones report them. Not just those of the people who own a tag.
- stavros 1y agoI think you should put an accelerometer on it, and only enable the tag a minute or two after it's completely stopped moving. That reduces the likelihood of an "it's following you" notification, as it's not really following you.
- econ 1y agoAdd a normal tag so that the thief can find it.
- jmpman 1y agoSo glad you built this. I thought of this about three weeks ago, and wanted to try the concept out. Now I can just buy it.
- badmonster 1y agointeresting project