Poll of the Day > i didn't know apple air tags were being used to track people

(+) Yeah! (+)

that's crazy!

unintended use case...

I know nothing about apple products so I'm not going to go into a rant about how nothing is secure and you have no privacy.

Like to stalk people? Yeah, people will basically reverse pickpocket one onto a person they want to track and follow them home. Car thieves can do a similar thing and stick one on a car they want to steal while it's parked somewhere, track where it is, then steal it when it's least secured.

I think the only way to really prevent it is to have them communicate with every phone with which they aren't paired in a certain radius and trigger an alarm if there's something suspicious about that proximity (i.e. the unpaired tag has remained within a 3 foot radius of the phone despite the phone moving more than 50 feet). That probably wouldn't be terribly hard to program, but requires the person to have a smart phone and also raises some significant privacy concerns because it basically means a given tag is communicating with every single phone at all times, so it's perhaps not ideal.

We should have never technologically advanced past the 1980s.

What are air tags

adjl posted...

Like to stalk people? Yeah, people will basically reverse pickpocket one onto a person they want to track and follow them home. Car thieves can do a similar thing and stick one on a car they want to steal while it's parked somewhere, track where it is, then steal it when it's least secured.

I think the only way to really prevent it is to have them communicate with every phone with which they aren't paired in a certain radius and trigger an alarm if there's something suspicious about that proximity (i.e. the unpaired tag has remained within a 3 foot radius of the phone despite the phone moving more than 50 feet). That probably wouldn't be terribly hard to program, but requires the person to have a smart phone and also raises some significant privacy concerns because it basically means a given tag is communicating with every single phone at all times, so it's perhaps not ideal.

It looks like they did make some updates to deal with that:

"AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone elses AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice its traveling with you and send you an alert. After a while, if you still havent found it, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know its there."

rjsilverthorn posted...

It looks like they did make some updates to deal with that:

"AirTag is designed to discourage unwanted tracking. If someone elses AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice its traveling with you and send you an alert. After a while, if you still havent found it, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know its there."

That doesn't sound like it'll help people without iPhones, but otherwise it sounds more or less like what I suggested.

GanglyKhan posted...

We should have never technologically advanced past the 1980s.

Yeah, these days it's always can we do it and not should we do it.

adjl posted...

That doesn't sound like it'll help people without iPhones, but otherwise it sounds more or less like what I suggested.

From what I understand of how they work, they only work if they are in the vicinity of iOS devices to start with.

"AirTags are not satellite navigation devices. AirTags are located on a map within the Find My app by utilizing Bluetooth signals from other anonymous iOS and iPadOS devices out in the world. To help prevent unwanted tracking, an iOS/iPadOS device will alert their owner if someone else's AirTag seems to be with them, instead of with the AirTag's owner, for too long.[12] If an AirTag is out of range of any Apple device for more than 8 to 24 hours,[13] it will begin to beep to alert a person that an AirTag may have been placed in their possessions.[14]"

My wife wanted to get some to put on our cats collars, I told her no, it was too expensive.

i have an app on my phone that'll scan for any airtags around me

ive found a few but they were all on other people

I use skin tags to track people

Metalsonic66 posted...

What are air tags

Apples tracking device that you attach to objects. The primary example, put it on your key chain so you can find your keys

I didn't know this tracking device was used to track things.

Dmess85 posted...

Apples tracking device that you attach to objects. The primary example, put it on your key chain so you can find your keys

I used to have something similar but it was just cheap thingies you could press a button to make chirp

all my topics are touching... now I feel internet fat

:O

Shocked Pikachu Face.
All of my text messages go to google so I can read them + respond in my web browser.

Reminds me of when people figured out that pictures taken with an iPhone would append GPS data to every picture, so anyone who knew how to look at metadata could figure out the exact location that any picture was taken at. So stalkers or criminals could figure out exactly where someone lived or spent their time to take advantage of it.