AirTag Anti-Stalking Measures 'Just Aren't Sufficient' Says Washington Post Report

[sirozha]

Via one of the billion iPhones in the hands of a 3rd party.

I doubt that tracking will be reliable enough to locate the Android user. You will get occasional hits as the Android user passes by iPhone users, but you won’t get a precise location of an Airtag planted on an Android user. I don’t think the accuracy will be granular enough to stalk an Android user.

Maybe it will be a problem in a college dorm or densely populated areas where people live in close proximity to each other, but in the area where I live, I doubt my neighbor’s iPhone or an iPhone in a passing car can pick up an Airtag planted in my house.

 

[crazy dave]

And everyone with an iPhone is helping the stalkers stalk. I want a refund for my phone being used to track other people’s lost items.

You can turn it off ...

 

[_Spinn_]

Fowler admits that Apple has done more to prevent AirTags from being used for stalking than other Bluetooth tracking device competitors like Tile, but there are still concerns that need to be addressed.

So even though it does more than Tile or any other tracker it is not good enough? So where is the scathing article about all the other trackers?

 

[Black Belt]

No one is stalking anyone with airtags. Give me a break. This is so stupid

 

[Robert.Walter]

You know you make a statement about lost and stolen items. I have seen a lot of comments saying AirTags are not for locating stolen items, only lost. This is not directed at you by no means but what would be the difference if you sat your back pack down walked off and forgot about it (lost item) versus you are sitting at your favorite outdoor diner and some dude on a bike rides by and steals your back pack (stolen) Either way you want your item back I am just not understanding why some people say they are only for lost items and not for stolen items.

Could be the genesis of this statement/idea lies with Apple. My guess Apple says this to create a liability shield for the person who will inevitably die when they use Findmy airtag and go confront the thief who ripped them off.

 

[randyhudson]

How long do you think the Find my network has been a thing? It's been active for two years ... if you're saying Apple silently turned it back on after you had turned it off, that is indeed bad.

yeah, that was the update that silently enabled it. And if you had been prompted, stalking required a much larger device costing hundreds of dollars.

 

[crazy dave]

I doubt that tracking will be reliable enough to locate the Android user. You will get occasional hits as the Android user passes by iPhone users, but you won’t get a precise location most likely of an Airtag planted on an Android user. I don’t think the accuracy will be granular enough to stalk an Android user.

The point of the experiment was to show that it was ... this would depend on the percentage of iPhone users in your area, but it can be done. In fact if it couldn't the AirTag is useless as it is meant to find your lost item where your iPhone isn't! Now whether or not it is better than buying a dedicated tracking devices online which can be had for cheap is another issue. But the ubiquity is what has some concerned. It is not unreasonable. Something like a collaboration between Apple and Google and other tracking companies like Tile to at least warn people when you aren't a part of a network that you are being tracked by that network would be good and go a long way to assuaging these concerns.

This is of course not difficult but would require standards and collaboration and maturity. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[dwaltwhit]

Remember all the great anti-tracking features Tile had? No? Oh...

Tile did great at not tracking my keys

 

[InGen]

Meanwhile every human that owns a phone that connects to a phone tower is actively being tracked and years of location metadata saved by their respective governments, which can be utilised at any moment by the relevant authorities. But we’re supposed to accept that apparently…

Can I play devil’s advocate here and question how the “3-day timer away from the owner” serves the customer when the customer may want to track valuable items that are not in his immediate residence?

Let’s say you have valuable items in storage that are not in your residence but are in proximity to someone else’s residence (say, apartment complex car park storage). By this logic I cannot apply AirTags to these items unless I interact with them at least every 3 days right? And if I don’t, will they continue to work if they are stolen? How much faster will battery drain if they are making alert sounds every hour simply because I am not babysitting the items and they also happen to be next to someone’s apartment who’s iPhones ping the items 3 days in a row?

I’m not against the safety measures being implemented here but they will surely cost the AirTags their ability to function fully in their intended purpose of tracking things.

 

[crazy dave]

yeah, that was the update that silently enabled it. And if you had been prompted, stalking required a much larger device costing hundreds of dollars.

Mine didn't. I had to turn it on just recently to play with it.

 

[Robert.Walter]

I doubt that tracking will be reliable enough to locate the Android user. You will get occasional hits as the Android user passes by iPhone users, but you won’t get a precise location most likely of an Airtag planted on an Android user. I don’t think the accuracy will be granular enough to stalk an Android user.

Don’t you think those hits are sending the gps coordinated back to the stalker? They must be for the tags to be useful in their function.

I wad testing my tags today. Just out in a walk I pinged my backpack back at my place. It was giving me distance data. But I didn’t play around enough to get a full feel of capabilities. Ps I’m using an iPh 6S so no UWB inputs. I expect the iPh 11 and later to have even better location info.

 

[mpavilion]

I'm going on a hunt for a similar article from around the time the first generation Tile came out... don't wait for me...

I don’t see you posting on TileRumors.com. Apple products receive a high level of scrutiny for obvious reasons.

 

[mpavilion]

Correct. Why is WaPo bashing Apple when, like you said, Amazon has all kind of devices to stalk someone. Maybe WaPo needs to do a story on its parent company about stalking devices instead.

Amazon isn’t WaPo’s parent company.

 

[crazy dave]

I don’t see you posting on TileRumors.com. Apple products receive a high level of scrutiny for obvious reasons.

I have to agree that when Apple does something it is intrinsically a bigger deal than when a relatively small company like Tile does something. That does not however excuse Tile from not including some of these features in their trackers and it is right to point out that trackers out there can already do this, with even less warning. The article does mention this of course, but Apple does and should receive a higher level of attention. So I mostly agree but I can also understand the sentiment that Apple is being unfairly singled out. It is indeed a little unfair but it is also the nature of how when Apple does something it is likely to have a much bigger impact.

 

[sirozha]

You can turn it off ...

Turning off Find My let’s you disable others tracking you by your iPhone. It doesn’t disable your iPhone reporting someone else’s Airtag location.

 

[Cndnmax]

it doesn't. find my network doesn't compare to the competition.

if the competition had a network of this vastness, this would have been discussed before.

Network size doesn’t really matter if you’re just stalking one person. You could use a tile, just look for someone that has a tile already. Add yours and stalk away lol.

 

[sirozha]

Don’t you think those hits are sending the gps coordinated back to the stalker? They must be for the tags to be useful in their function.

I wad testing my tags today. Just out in a walk I pinged my backpack back at my place. It was giving me distance data. But I didn’t play around enough to get a full feel of capabilities. Ps I’m using an iPh 6S so no UWB inputs. I expect the iPh 11 and later to have even better location info.

Was there another iOS device in your house where the backpack was?

iPhone 11 would not make tracking more accurate if your Airtag location is reported by someone else’s iPhone. The accurate U1 driven tracking only works when your iPhone is in close proximity to the Airtag.

 

[KPOM]

It’s a legitimate concern, particularly for women. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple makes changes based on feedback. It’s good that they thought about privacy concerns (Tile and Samsung don’t have similar features at all), but there is still room for improvement. I get that people don’t want to get pinged every time they walk by an AirTag that isn’t “theirs,” but maybe the tracking time can be something shorter like 2 hours rather than 72 hours.

 

[JDuggan]

Sorry, the cons outweigh the pros. Bad product.

 

[KPOM]

Network size doesn’t really matter if you’re just stalking one person. You could use a tile, just look for someone that has a tile already. Add yours and stalk away lol.

Except that the only people who could track you would be the subscribers to Tile. AirTag opens this up to a huge network of people.

 

[Martinpa]

I don’t see you posting on TileRumors.com. Apple products receive a high level of scrutiny for obvious reasons.

I get that Apple has visibility and a huge global consumer base, but for a time, Tile was pretty much the only player in the field, or the only one with brand recognition. As such, it should've gotten scrutiny if privacy is really the issue here, and not just topical clickbait opportunism.

 

[Steve686]

Well, for one, if you are going to stalk someone, it'd be pretty dumb to use something that is assumedly registered to you and your Apple account which makes it pretty damn easy to figure out who the stalker is.

 

[Cndnmax]

You know you make a statement about lost and stolen items. I have seen a lot of comments saying AirTags are not for locating stolen items, only lost. This is not directed at you by no means but what would be the difference if you sat your back pack down walked off and forgot about it (lost item) versus you are sitting at your favorite outdoor diner and some dude on a bike rides by and steals your back pack (stolen) Either way you want your item back I am just not understanding why some people say they are only for lost items and not for stolen items.

It’s probably a liability statement like when they say it’s not for tracking pets or kids. People are just using it to justify the areas where this device would fall short as a theft recovery device. Ie: can be easily disabled, can be easily located, tracking is not continuous, and the fact that it will alert people that are nearby when lost.

 

[antiprotest]

Can anybody tell me how Tile has managed all this time? I've never used it.

 

[Xak444]

Yeah WAPO is such a great tech authority

That was my initial thought