AirTag timer before pinging members of the public

[zakarhino]

Scenario: Your bag is stolen. Deep inside your bag is an AirTag. You want to track the thief and get your bag back. The thief has an iPhone*. How many minutes/hours do you have before the AirTag alerts the thief that they're in possession of someone else's AirTag?

I'm not talking about the 3 day timeout before the Tag starts making a sound, I mean how long before the AirTag utilizes its "anti stalking notification" abilities. I'm hoping it's at least an hour or two which could be enough time to get police help or something similar. I couldn't find an official figure on Apple's site. Does anyone have this info?

*This is also assuming they're not smart enough to open the Find My app on their iPhone and use the "identify lost tag" feature to essentially scan the bag for any AirTags.

 

[matrix07]

Scenario: Your bag is stolen. Deep inside your bag is an AirTag. You want to track the thief and get your bag back. The thief has an iPhone*. How many minutes/hours do you have before the AirTag alerts the thief that they're in possession of someone else's AirTag?

We don't know yet.

*This is also assuming they're not smart enough to open the Find My app on their iPhone and use the "identify lost tag" feature to essentially scan the bag for any AirTags.

For NFC to work your phone need to be very close to it. That means you have to know where the tag is first.

 

[J@ffa]

We do know — three days. I believe that if you expressly mark the AirTag as lost, then your chosen message will proactively pop up on nearby iPhones that a lost item is close by. I guess if you knew for sure your item was stolen then you wouldn’t do this and you’d just try and locate it (or more probably hooe the police can!).

 

[KeithJenner]

We do know — three days. I believe that if you expressly mark the AirTag as lost, then your chosen message will proactively pop up on nearby iPhones that a lost item is close by. I guess if you knew for sure your item was stolen then you wouldn’t do this and you’d just try and locate it (or more probably hooe the police can!).

No we don't.

The OP is talking about the anti stalking notifications, which will start well before that. There is still no clarification as to how long these take. My guess is less than an hour, others think longer than that.

 

[Howard2k]

No we don't.

The OP is talking about the anti stalking notifications, which will start well before that. There is still no clarification as to how long these take. My guess is less than an hour, others think longer than that.

How do we know that it will start well before that?

 

[cxy2176]

We don't know yet.

For NFC to work your phone need to be very close to it. That means you have to know where the tag is first.

There is also a feature the OP is talking about that allows you to scan for lost AirTags without tapping them to an iPhone/Apple device. This is an Apple only feature within the Find My app. The NFC tap feature is a secondary method to pull up contact info when the device is in Lost Mode. To my knowledge, to activate either method the tag has to be in Lost Mode.

 

[KeithJenner]

How do we know that it will start well before that?

We don't "know" it, but there are a number of reasons that most people believe this to be the case:

An anti stalking alert which takes three days to start will have totally failed in its objective.

There will be no point in having an alert that warns you of the tags presence and asks if you want the tag to make a noise if it doesn’t start until after another function has caused the tag to make a noise.

The picture on the apple website that demonstrates this shows the alarm having occurred about 50 minutes after first seeing the tag.

Regardless, my point was that we don't know how long it will take (as evidenced by this discussion) and the OP is specifically not talking about the 3 day alert, so the post I quoted was incorrect.

 

[Howard2k]

We don't "know" it, but there are a number of reasons that most people believe this to be the case:

An anti stalking alert which takes three days to start will have totally failed in its objective.

There will be no point in having an alert that warns you of the tags presence and asks if you want the tag to make a noise if it doesn’t start until after another function has caused the tag to make a noise.

The picture on the apple website that demonstrates this shows the alarm having occurred about 50 minutes after first seeing the tag.

Regardless, my point was that we don't know how long it will take (as evidenced by this discussion) and the OP is specifically not talking about the 3 day alert, so the post I quoted was incorrect.

Thanks, I hadn’t seen the 50 minute time lapse but I see it now.

 

[J@ffa]

No we don't.

The OP is talking about the anti stalking notifications, which will start well before that. There is still no clarification as to how long these take. My guess is less than an hour, others think longer than that.

My bad, I thought it was the same thing. Now they’re getting into people’s hands I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

 

[mrklaw]

I don’t think ‘lost’ mode pings other people’s phones. Just puts the tag in a mode where maybe other devices more actively report location back to you?

ifninloat something I explicitly don’t want other people’s phones to know - I’m happy for it to stay hidden in a bush or down behind a seat until I get there.