AirTag Used to Successfully Track a Mailed Package Across the UK

[Rafagon]

I had the idea first. 🤣

Most creative use for AirTags?

If you're shipping something very important and/or valuable, you could include an AirTag in the package for precision tracking. Of course, this will depend on how many Apple devices are near your package at any given moment, and whether they're participating in the "Find My" network.

forums.macrumors.com

 

[alexandr]

How? The guy doesn't know any of the postal worker's name or information. He is just tracking his package!

yea, that was a joke mocking all of the people who are losing their s—t over how airtags violate privacy and are stalker's bffs.

 

[McKodiak]

I am excited this technology exists, though I have never once said to myself that I wish I had a tracker to find my lost anything.

This is certainly one of these devices that the benefit of it's existence has to be measured against its potential harm. If one person gets tracked that results in anything negative happening to people, this is already a product I want not to exist.

 

[jhollington]

I think he's saying that if the postal delivery person has an iPhone, the feature which notifies him that an Airtag is traveling with him will be activated, and he will be given the option on his phone to disable them.

Correct, but what I'm saying is the "option" to disable them is just instructions for how to do that.

The AirTag does not offer a "remote disable" feature. That's a misconception that went around from a support article that was published shortly before the AirTags came out.

When you find an unknown AirTag, you'll see an option with "Instructions to Disable." Tapping that takes you to an Apple web page in Safari that simply tells you to "Push down and twist counterclockwise on the back of the AirTag. Take the cover off and remove the battery."

 

[vbnautilus]

Correct, but what I'm saying is the "option" to disable them is just instructions for how to do that.

The AirTag does not offer a "remote disable" feature. That's a misconception that went around from a support article that was published shortly before the AirTags came out.

When you find an unknown AirTag, you'll see an option with "Instructions to Disable." Tapping that takes you to an Apple web page in Safari that simply tells you to "Push down and twist counterclockwise on the back of the AirTag. Take the cover off and remove the battery."

I see. Yeah, I didn't understand it that way. I thought that dialog would contain the option to stop the tracking in the software. That is dumb if you have to physically find it to disable it.

 

[jhollington]

Am I missing something here? The person wrote “my friend left the envelope on a table in his house” and the concern is the friend has not received a notification that an Airtag is moving along with him? Well it isn’t, is it? It is sitting on a table. So unless he is carrying that table around with him why would he receive a notification? Think about it for a second. There are soon to be thousands, if not tens of thousands of these devices out there. Your coworker has one in their bag in the cubicle next to you, should you get a notification? You have guests come to visit (when that can happen again) should you be getting notifications they have Airtags in their bags? No. So why would you get a notification that an Airtag is in an envelope sitting on a table?

Yup, an AirTag has to be moving with you in order to generate an alert — which in my own testing seems to be more about distance and locations visited than it is about time.

However, it's also worth noting that you would still only get "Moving with You" alerts if the AirTag was away from the original owner. So co-workers in their cubicles and guests coming to your home wouldn't be an issue anyway. More importantly, however, you won't have to worry about all of the AirTag-toting people on the bus or train with you, or anybody riding in your car.

I do not know how the “moving along with you” notification is set up but I would imagine that if you were to move out of some predefined range of the Airtag the tracking clock would reset as, well, if you can move out of range then it is not moving with you.

That's a good point. There's probably a timer of some kind, but it stands to reason that if it's only moving with you for brief periods of time, then it's not really considered a threat. There would be too many false positives otherwise.

 

[1258186]

That's actually normal behaviour. AirTags don't notify anybody if they're simply lost. The original owner can track them down or make them play a sound, but they otherwise remain passive.

I suspect this was a deliberate decision on Apple's part, rather than an omission. Although Tile does this, they have a much smaller network, and people who are running the Tile app — and therefore capable of finding Tile tags — know what they're dealing with. Having dozens of iPhones report randomly lost AirTags could get chaotic. Plus, there's always the risk of alerting a would-be thief to the presence of a lost item.

I know that if I lost something, I'd rather my AirTag didn't advertise its existence to everybody nearby, since unless I left it behind in another city, it makes much more sense to have it remain exactly where it is so that I can go back and retrieve it myself.

The only active alerts and notifications are designed for anti-stalking purposes, not for helping to locate legitimately lost AirTags. An unknown AirTag that's travelling with you to multiple locations could have been planted on you. One that's simply laying around nearby is considered harmless to the finder.

Ok thanks I didn’t know that. I thought they actively pinged other iPhones when in lost mode so they could be found and the owner alerted. It actually makes more sense to not broadcast their location to other iPhone users.

 

[jhollington]

I see. Yeah, I didn't understand it that way. I thought that dialog would contain the option to stop the tracking in the software. That is dumb if you have to physically find it to disable it.

Well, not really. We discussed this is another thread here on MR a couple of weeks ago, and the ability to disable remotely just leaves way too much room for abuse in the other direction. Or even potential misunderstandings resulting in AirTags being needlessly disabled.

When you receive an "Unknown AirTag Found Moving With You" alert, you are given the option to make it play a sound. This allows you to physically located it. Once it's in your hand, you can pop out the battery.

However, it makes sense that you shouldn't be able to disable an AirTag until you're physically holding it. What if you're mistakenly alerted to someone else's AirTag? Perhaps they're travelling on the bus with you and their iPhone battery is dead, or they forgot it at home. Paranoid users would assume they're being tracked and start frantically disabling every AirTag that comes up.

 

[now i see it]

For a company that likes to spout off about customer privacy all-the-time - these trackers are the exact opposite of their narrative.
Are their privacy talking points all just smoke and mirrors?

 

[sejoki]

What potential harm is there? If you have someone’s HOME ADDRESS there is not a lot of harm in sending a tracker to the house in the mail. It will simply show the airtag being at the address you gave.

You don’t get a letter or package and keep it your car. 🤦🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️ Once the package is opened, the gig is up.

Not to the home address, no. But there are people who use PO boxes for privacy reasons, because they want to be able to receive packages without publicly posting on the internet where they live.

You'd pick it up at the post office and take it home. You find the tag and now what? - it's not like the AirTag is just giving out any information who it belongs to, because then it'd be useless for keys. Even if it did - someone wouldn't be stupid enough to actually link this thing to their personal Apple ID and then send it off to someone.

 

[jhollington]

For a company that likes to spout off about customer privacy all-the-time - these trackers are the exact opposite of their narrative.
Are their privacy talking points all just smoke and mirrors?

Item trackers are a double-edged sword, no matter which way you look at it, but Apple has done a better job of making this technology private and secure than anybody else has (especially considering that Tile and Samsung et al have done nothing at all in these areas). So at least Apple is trying to mitigate the risks.

Using tracking devices for nefarious purposes is far from a new thing. The biggest problem with AirTags is that they're relatively inexpensive, small, and offer longer battery life, thereby opening up these kinds of uses to a much wider array of bad actors.

However, in addition to the anti-stalking features, Apple has made it clear that they can and will work with law enforcement to identify the owner of an AirTag, so anybody who drops an AirTag on somebody without their permission is basically leaving their calling card behind.

Beyond that, however, your AirTag can't be tracked by anybody but you. Everything is encrypted and anonymized in such a way that even Apple can't track where any given AirTag is at any given time. They can identify the owner once supplied with the serial number, since of course that has to be registered to an Apple ID, but Apple's tracking network has actually been brilliantly engineered in such a way as to prevent unauthorized tracking of AirTags.

Unfortunately, stalking is a very hard hole to close up entirely, since in that case, the tracking of the AirTag is "authorized" as it was planted by its owner —it's the tracking of the person on the other end that's not. Apple needs to do better in this area, but I'm sure they're working on it.

 

[EvilHomer80]

Way too much is made of this "potential harm". I don't want the effectiveness and usefulness of the product to be further crippled by this nonsense.

I agree that the effectiveness and usefulness of the product should not be crippled. However I said it when released, in a domestic abusive situation these could be problematic and its frustrating because the solution is simple and should have been thought through:

Solution: If tag is separated from owner and is moving/has moved from its last paired location then beep + alert (for iOS). Now the person it is travelling with can consciously choose to disable the alert, not really a big deal to quickly disable.

The reason this is more a problem for Apple than the likes of Tile is that Apple has significantly more devices out there that can give the exact location of the tracker than Tile meaning rate of success will be much higher. For some people this could be a genuine safety concern that could be solved easily.

I'm not jumping on the "this will end in tears" bandwagon, its overhyped. But put in plain English, the person that has the tracker should be the only person who can determine if they are happy to continue being tracked or not and that should happen quickly not 3 days later when an abusive partner already discovered where the person was staying and hunted them down. The effort to silence it should be as simple as pressing a button on the item or telling iOS you know you have the tile and are ok with it. Problem solved

 

[jhollington]

You'd pick it up at the post office and take it home. You find the tag and now what? - it's not like the AirTag is just giving out any information who it belongs to, because then it'd be useless for keys. Even if it did - someone wouldn't be stupid enough to actually link this thing to their personal Apple ID and then send it off to someone.

If you were an iPhone user, you would likely be notified of the unknown AirTag's presence by the time you got home. Unfortunately, it's unclear if that would be soon enough to avoid divulging your home address.

Once you found the AirTag, you'd pull out the battery of course, and if you managed to do that before you got home, then you'd be fine. If not, well then all bets are off as to whether the person knows your home address.

In either case, I'd contact the police, who would be able to use the serial number to request information on the original owner from Apple. Even if the person didn't link it to their personal Apple ID, it has to be linked to an Apple ID that is in turn linked to an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, otherwise the attacker wouldn't be able to track it. Find My Items doesn't work on the web (at least not yet). Unless the person was very good at covering their tracks, it wouldn't be too hard to trace it back to them.

 

[gene731]

Mmmm. So my Android using brother wouldn’t know if I stuck an AirTag in his car to track his movements…
Just kidding of course, but this could be really creepy. Imagine a criminal who spots a nice car in a car park for example…slips an airtag underneath it and finds out where it’s kept overnight.

Imagine said criminal meeting an early demise.

 

[jhollington]

Solution: If tag is separated from owner and is moving/has moved from its last paired location then beep + alert (for iOS). Now the person it is travelling with can consciously choose to disable the alert, not really a big deal to quickly disable.

That's a good idea, and to be fair, I think it's something Apple can easily tweak, and probably will.

There are "moving with you" alerts, but they don't seem to come up quickly enough. In my own testing, they sometimes fire after walking or driving only a couple of blocks, but not always. It seems to be a bit inconsistent, and of course Apple hasn't divulged anything about the algorithm at all.

On the other side, though, I can see how it might want to avoid potential false positives. While an iPhone shouldn't fire off an alert for an AirTag that remains in contact with its paired device, it's unclear how often this contact is made — AirTags aren't persistently connected to an iPhone — so if the alerts for moving AirTags went off immediately, people would potentially be getting them every time they rode the bus with others who have their own AirTags on them. Then there's also the possibility of somebody who is legitimately carrying their own AirTag but for whatever reason doesn't have their iPhone turned on or even with them.

It's clearly a balancing act.

 

[Lemon Olive]

I agree that the effectiveness and usefulness of the product should not be crippled. However I said it when released, in a domestic abusive situation these could be problematic and its frustrating because the solution is simple and should have been thought through:

Solution: If tag is separated from owner and is moving/has moved from its last paired location then beep + alert (for iOS). Now the person it is travelling with can consciously choose to disable the alert, not really a big deal to quickly disable.

The reason this is more a problem for Apple than the likes of Tile is that Apple has significantly more devices out there that can give the exact location of the tracker than Tile meaning rate of success will be much higher. For some people this could be a genuine safety concern that could be solved easily.

I'm not jumping on the "this will end in tears" bandwagon, its overhyped. But put in plain English, the person that has the tracker should be the only person who can determine if they are happy to continue being tracked or not and that should happen quickly not 3 days later when an abusive partner already discovered where the person was staying and hunted them down. The effort to silence it should be as simple as pressing a button on the item or telling iOS you know you have the tile and are ok with it. Problem solved

It isn't that simple at all. Your suggestion has negative impacts on the general usability of the product. If I leave a bag on a bus, and it immediately begins beeping and someone nearby dismisses an alert on their phone and my AirTag no longer works? No. The whole idea is extremely flawed.

 

[barkomatic]

The problem is, how does Apple update the tags so that they can't be used to track someone without their knowledge but would still be useful to find lost luggage? They are also going to have to find a way to give Android users (and iOS users for that matter) *reliable* clear alerts.

Not just Airtags, but the samsung and tile versions as well. As usual, when Apple releases something the associated problems are magnified due to the sheer scale.

 

[deconstruct60]

.... His friend did however hear an audible alert from the AirTag, which is another method Apple uses to alert users to an unknown device. After the audible alert, it's unlikely that AirTags would send an alert to an iPhone.

Unlikely? It might help to look at Apple's site.

"... An AirTag that isn't with the person who registered it for an extended period of time will also play a sound when moved so you can find it, even if you don’t use an iOS device. ... "

What to do if you get an alert that an AirTag, set of AirPods, Find My network accessory, or compatible Bluetooth location-tracking device is with you - Apple Support

AirTag lets you easily track things like your keys, wallet, purse, backpack, luggage, and more. Simply set it up with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and attach it to your item, and your AirTag shows up in the Items tab in the Find My app.

support.apple.com

1. The sound is primarily for non iOS/iPad 14.5+ devices. Making the sound doesn't preclude something being sent to the iPhone. However, the iPhone non being on 14.5 will. Bluetooth off on the iPhone probably will too. Simply being an iPhone doesn't magically put it in play all by itself. ( Lots of Apple devices do have bluetooth on and on the latest updates to the OS. Walking aournd with bluetooth beacon on all the time is a beacon. )

2. The "when moved so you can ..." is a critical aspect here. If the air tag is not moving at all , then it is extremely likely not tracking someone ( besides someone completely bedridden who is also equally completely immobile. A person completely immobile is unhealthy. ).


This experiment was at best cluelessly constructed. At worst, it was designed to fail on purpose to create ad click bait.

Lucikly in this case, there was no potential harm in the friend's iPhone failing to alert him to the unknown AirTag.

But it didn't fail. It produced a beep. If the beep was on the person while they were walking around that would be an issue of personal tracking.

Suppressing the ability to track a non moving object pretty much defeats the purpose of the device. If the air tags set off a high number of "false positive " alerts then they won't be useful. If the phone is variably moving away from and closer to the object then they may or may not be in possession of the object. (e.g., put bag in overhead bin in an airplane 4 rows away. Someone passs bin on way to bathroom and back. So that person get alerts? ).

However, in other instances, there could be a danger if the built-in measures for unwanted tracking fail to kick in.

[/QUOTE]


Apple's

Article Link: AirTag Used to Successfully Track a Mailed Package Across the UK

 

[EvilHomer80]

That's a good idea, and to be fair, I think it's something Apple can easily tweak, and probably will.

There are "moving with you" alerts, but they don't seem to come up quickly enough. In my own testing, they sometimes fire after walking or driving only a couple of blocks, but not always. It seems to be a bit inconsistent, and of course Apple hasn't divulged anything about the algorithm at all.

On the other side, though, I can see how it might want to avoid potential false positives. While an iPhone shouldn't fire off an alert for an AirTag that remains in contact with its paired device, it's unclear how often this contact is made — AirTags aren't persistently connected to an iPhone — so if the alerts for moving AirTags went off immediately, people would potentially be getting them every time they rode the bus with others who have their own AirTags on them. Then there's also the possibility of somebody who is legitimately carrying their own AirTag but for whatever reason doesn't have their iPhone turned on or even with them.

It's clearly a balancing act.

Agreed, there are plenty of legitimate use cases e.g. you leave phone at home etc. In my idea you need a very simple way to say "hey, I know I left my phone at home don't warn me again". I also read (but have not tried) that a tag owner can disable alerts if giving to someone who is part of the "family". I don't think this should be allowed if it is true. In the domestic abuse use case, the person may still be in the "family" but have find my disabled on phone. They could now be silently tracked with the tag.

 

[Putzytart]

Surely this is the future of shipping tracking once chip prices go down and they are basically embedded in everything.

 

[vanillaboy]

When the eagerness to get a post up outweighs the willingness to check grammar and spelling first.

Is that called a hypo typo?

 

[ikramerica]

I think the real travesty is how long it took to deliver this package when it’s only a few hours by train.

That said, Apple has opened a can of worms they didn’t need to buy.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

In other news, it’s confirmed that AirTags is a cool thing for two or more friends to play tracking games with! By this Christmas, citywide TikTokTag hunts will be all the rage! (Kinda like randonautica with less rando.)

I’ve etched a secret message onto 8 AirTags and synced them to your phone. Find the tags, figure out the clues and you get to keep the AirTags!

 

[insomniac86]

I think he's saying that if the postal delivery person has an iPhone, the feature which notifies him that an Airtag is traveling with him will be activated, and he will be given the option on his phone to disable them.

The only thing the driver can disable are alerts on their own phone. They can’t disable the AirTag.

 

[roryf]

I think it's quite obvious here that a tracker traveling across the country is not traveling with a person the entire way, its just picking up current location when it's within range of an apple device, so it's not actually tracking anyones personal movements. Same thing for sitting on a friends table at home. It's not tracking his movements as it is not on his person and within range of his phone all day. It's sitting on a table not moving. As far as the tag is concerned it could have been dropped and laying somewhere on the ground. Why would it send his friend a message to say he is being tracked when he isn't???