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A controlling partner would not give you the option to opt in or opt out. We are not talking about reasonable people here. Making it impossible to track you is the safest option for many women living in fear of their husbands.
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AirTag Owners Bemoan Inability to Let Others Track Their Items Via Family Sharing
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A controlling partner would not give you the option to opt in or opt out. We are not talking about reasonable people here. Making it impossible to track you is the safest option for many women living in fear of their husbands.
Are you kidding me? If the wife wants to go places without husband knowing where she is (and vice versa), then it's time to get a divorce. You don't want to function like a family, don't enable family sharing. Family sharing can't be enabled without each member's consent. it's only for those under 18 that family sharing can be enabled without their consent, but then again, that comes with the territory of not being an adult.
If you enable family sharing, then family members should be okay with other family members knowing their location. If family members don't want to share their location, they shouldn't accept being invited into the family sharing.
Also, the AirTag is not the best way to track your family member. Find My allows you to track any device that has its Apple ID accepted into family sharing. Remote family can still share their location via the iPhone/Apple Watch, using Find My Friends (now called People in the Find My app). AirTags are not for tracking people's location. It's for tracking the location of things and perhaps dogs unless you want to buy an iPhone for your dog.
If I want to track a key fob or a dog with an AirTag, and I am married, so both the car and the dog belongs to both my wife and me, then we should both be able to track the same AirTag.
Those who are talking about using AirTags to track their significant others are most likely not married. They are most likely tyring to overstep the boundaries of their current relationship, where the other party of the relationship thinks about it in much looser and freer terms than the party that is trying to leverage the AirTag to exert their control. If you want to know where your significant other is, talk to him/her and tell them that's what you want to do. They will either agree to enable Family Sharing or Find My Friends, or they will tell you to go jump in the lake, and then you will know the exact state of your relationship.
For my wife and me, Find My iPhone / Friends has been a huge blessing because in some cases, my wife may not hear the phone call (phone in her purse, Apple Watch is out of battery or phone left in the car), etc. or me not being able to answer the phone or not hearing it ring, both of us can locate each other quickly. I can't describe how many times I needed to reach my wife, and she wouldn't answer her phone because she didn't hear the ring, so I would ping her phone using Find My, and she would call me back immediately. We've been using this feature now for 10 years. In fact, before I bought her an Apple Watch, the only way for me to get in touch with my wife was to ping her iPhone via Find My iPhone and then wait for her to call me back (she did usually within less than a minute).
There have been times when we had real emergency, and this one feature allowed us to get in touch with each other quickly, whereas without this feature, one or the other person would have been oblivious of an emergency in progress. One time, my 2-year-old son was knocked down unconscious onto a concrete floor by one of his friends when my wife was with him. My phone was not on me and was on silent. She pinged my iPhone, and I called her back to learn what had happened. My wife was in such a distressed state because of my son being unconscious that she couldn't drive or even explain to me where they were. I was able to locate them using Find My iPhone, plot out their location on the Apple Maps, using the Find My iPhone feature, and then I rushed them both to the Children's hospital ER. If it hadn't been for Find My, that incident could have ended much worse than it did.
Stop using privacy concerns to justify shortcomings in the Apple ecosystem. Again, if you are afraid of being tracked by an AirTag belonging to your family member, don't agree to join Family Sharing. As simple as that.
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she lives at your home. Why would she get a you’re being tracked notification if her living space is yours…?
You are missing my point.
A controlling husband may not give you the option to opt in or opt out of sharing your phones location. Given the way that these things work the phone will give a far more accurate location.
If apple believes that there is a privacy risk here then I see no reason why the current family sharing location features are not such a risk.
Thank you for that. I think it makes sense.
It is great that someone has actually taken time to explain some of the practical issues.
I can see that there may be problems with tracking the tag directly from another persons device, but I'd have thought that there would be a way that your phone could share the data that it receives from the tag to family members. However, that would be quite a difference from how I assume sharing works now, so makes it understandable that it isn't available straight away (if it is something they eventually plan to add).
Given the choice of this being a permanent sign in or not being available at all then I think there is a case for just making it permanent.
I understand. If the parents shares the AirTag with their kids iDevice, they then will be able to see where the child is, tracking them. It’s shared, so no message will come up allowing them to turn off tracking.
Apple has disabled family tracking for a very good reason. According to US National Statistics 1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
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So funny seeing those who say lack of sharing was an Apple "oversight." Like in the 2+ years AirTags were under development, nobody having anything to do with the project thought that sharing should be considered and debated. Especially as there is a sharing option for location in Find My.
It was a decision, not an oversight.
It was a decision, not an oversight.
Nope. Still totally missing my point.
I won’t bother explaining again. It’s clearly written if you want to bother actually reading it.
You don’t sound like someone I would want to be married to. I don’t own my wife. She is her own person and lives her own life. I don’t want or need to know where she is every moment of the day. If you don’t have any trust in your partner your marriage is a sham.
This would be absolutely fine for me.
We have a set of keys for locks around the house. The back door, the side gate, etc. These are not my keys or my wife's keys. They get misplaced all the time though.
With AirTags currently, only one of us can make the AirTag beep or locate them.
I can't imagine we're that unusual in having items we want to track that aren't "owned" exclusively by one person in the family.
Speaking of knots... Funny that you're unable to add anything to the subject.
Again, it was conscious decision, like with everything else about Airtags. Not an oversight.
3 weeks ago I was doing fine. Then I paid $60 for this thing and I want it to be worth my money. Is that wrong?
Every moment? Where did you get that?
If your wife doesn’t want you to know where she is, you should get to know her boyfriend. Perhaps, he will want to join Family Sharing.
This is definitely a deal breaker for me and how I would want to use them - keys, luggage, dog harness - all would require family sharing.
I stand by my rule - "Never buy a first generation Apple product." I've seen people get burned way too many times over the years doing just that.
I stand by my rule - "Never buy a first generation Apple product." I've seen people get burned way too many times over the years doing just that.
I wasn't going to bother explaining this to you again, but having just read the part of your post I have bolded above, I have to respond, as you are making suggestions about my personality that I can to just ignore.
To be clear, and please just take the time to actually read these words, I will explain my position.
I have no strong opinion either way as to whether Apple allow family sharing of airtags. I have stated in this thread that I would have very little reason for using it.
My point, and it really is a very simple one, is that if Apple believe that it is a risk then why do they allow it on the phones? That is all. If you choose to read more into that and make accusations against me then you really need to take a look at yourself.
Once again, as you may still not get it, I am questioning the current family sharing abilities, if privacy is a risk.
My family use family sharing on our phones, principally so that my wife can see my progress when I am walking (long distance walking is one of my hobbies) and also as I used to travel around for work it is quite handy to see my progress when driving home. We find it useful sometimes to see where the other person is on occasions (such as when my wife car broke down a couple of weeks ago). It isn't for everyone, but many families find it very useful. In a non controlling and trusting relationship it is very useful. I understand a lot about the issues with controlling partners, and the fact that you just chose to assume that I don't is really your problem, not mine.
Do you understand now?
Feel free to apologise for your accusation if you do.
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Yep, it's simple. If you don't want family tracking, just disable it. It's honestly easier for me to use my wife's phone, enable sharing to me, and she won't even know until she opens the app (which she never does).
Point being, there are so many other ways of tracking significant others. Just add controls to these and it's a done deal. Send a notification once a week to remind them that their airtag is being tracked if they really care that much. Such a stupid feature to leave out.
Point being, there are so many other ways of tracking significant others. Just add controls to these and it's a done deal. Send a notification once a week to remind them that their airtag is being tracked if they really care that much. Such a stupid feature to leave out.
Then again, there’s Find My that allows one to locate their significant other if they are members of the same Family Sharing plan and do so much more accurately. Of course, a Family member can opt out of sharing his/her location. So, why the AirTag should be any different? It should be opted in by default to share its location with family sharing members, and then opt out manually from sharing the airtag location paired with one’s phone. Just like this is already implemented with the location sharing on the iPhone.
Even if they change this people will still find something else to complain about.
If I have misinterpreted you and/or your comments then I will happily apologise and I apologise for my previous comment that you seem like a controlling person. Clearly that was wrong of me to assume that and I will delete that comment.
IMO Apple were right to disable family tracking in AirTags. I understand they have it enabled in other products such as the iPhone and I understand that could be seen as a contradiction and annoying but Apple have made clear that AirTags are not designed to track people, they were designed to track things like your keys.
I realise that you would find this feature useful but I am looking at it from the opposite side of the fence so to speak. I would be very happy if Apple removed any form of tracking or family sharing from all their products. I don’t expect them to do it and and I don’t expect you to agree with me. I understand many people will disagree with me but it’s just my opinion.