I'm still waiting for my AirTags to arrive - and I'm assuming there must be a pretty big terms and conditions thing to agree to on these? Someone is going to find a way to try to sue Apple for privacy or something.
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AirTag Used to Successfully Track a Mailed Package Across the UK
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I don't want to be tracked at all. Will 4.5 prevent any airtag from pinging my device?
I can think of few simple ways Apple could resolve all this:
1. They can add a "Do not use my device to track AirTags" toggle. Anyone who is worried about being tracked, can just turn it off.
2. They could get more fancy and have options like "Do not use my device to track AirTags at my home address" or "Do not use my device to track AirTags between the hours of xxx to yyy"
3. They can "fuzz" the data, or put some delay between the AirTag being detected and when the location is reported. This would enough to eliminate the "creepy guy follows me home from bar" scenario, but it would still be useful for "I left my keys at some bar last night, and I forget which one"
Basically, they can still have these tags be useful without making people feel like it is invading their privacy.
1. They can add a "Do not use my device to track AirTags" toggle. Anyone who is worried about being tracked, can just turn it off.
2. They could get more fancy and have options like "Do not use my device to track AirTags at my home address" or "Do not use my device to track AirTags between the hours of xxx to yyy"
3. They can "fuzz" the data, or put some delay between the AirTag being detected and when the location is reported. This would enough to eliminate the "creepy guy follows me home from bar" scenario, but it would still be useful for "I left my keys at some bar last night, and I forget which one"
Basically, they can still have these tags be useful without making people feel like it is invading their privacy.
I read this as the person who is getting the alert on the iPhone that an AirTag is moving with them being able to permanently disable that alarm if they are part of the ‘family’ of the Airtag owner.
The problem is that "my device" is not the only one out there. AirTags are designed to be tracked via any Apple device within range, so you'd still be able to be tracked even if you removed your device from the equation.
first of all, i was kidding — secondly tracking numbers won't show when postal workers go to use the toilet(for example)
There already is an on/off toggle for ‘Share my location’ in the Find My app (which is device-specific). That might also disable the relaying of the location of any AirTag (as that relies on the location of the Apple device the AirTag is connecting to). Of course, this will also disable the ability to find your own device.
Regardless, if you are close enough to somebody else with an Apple device, neither your proposal or that option will help you. It’s the same problem with a cellular modem tracker that also has its own GPS, as long as you are within reach of a mobile phone tower, it can track you.
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Well, if somebody nearby dismisses an alert, that has nothing to do with disabling your AirTag so it no longer works. They would have to find your AirTag first, at which point they would realize that it was in your bag that had been left behind, and not an attempt to track them. Of course, if they were extremely paranoid, they could still take the battery out, but that's the only way to disable an AirTag (other than destroying it entirely, obviously).
Still, though, Apple clearly doesn't want to risk triggering false positives all over the place. Not to mention if I've lost an item, I'd rather have a chance to go back and retrieve it myself before anybody else is needlessly made aware of its presence.
That's entirely correct, and you're right on all counts. After a "Found Moving With You" alert has gone off, users can choose to mute the alerts for one day. If the AirTag belongs to another member of the same Apple Family Sharing group, there will be a second option to mute them indefinitely.
On the one hand, this is a good feature for family members who regularly borrow each other's stuff,
but a recent article in The Washington Post actually pointed out the same domestic abuse scenario that you describe. However, it's easily mitigated simply by having Apple require some additional level of authentication before alerts can be disabled in the Find My app, in much the same way you need to authenticate to turn off Find My iPhone.
While that wouldn't help in a scenario where the abuser has such a level of control over their victim that they know all of their passwords, an AirTag wouldn't be necessary in this case anyway — the abuser can already track their victim using Find My iPhone.
If I correctly understand what you're saying, it's important to note that you aren't being tracked by other people's AirTags unless somebody deliberately plants one directly on you, in which case you should get a notification that an unknown AirTag has been found moving around with you.
What your iPhone will do is anonymously report its location on behalf of any nearby AirTags that it comes into contact with that aren't already near their owners devices. Nobody — not even Apple — can determine that it's your iPhone reporting the location. In fact, Apple doesn't even know whose AirTag your iPhone is reporting.
Apple's servers get the encrypted ID of the AirTag, and only that one encrypted ID (nothing about your iPhone is sent at all). However, that ID is meaningless to Apple, because it's encrypted and can only be decrypted by the owner searching for it using their own Find My app.
If you really don't want to participate in Apple's Find My network, you can opt out by turning off the "Find My Network" setting in the iPhone Settings app. This will, however, prevent you from locating your own iPhone when it's not connected to Wi-Fi or cellular, since the Find My network is used for that as well — it's actually been around for Apple devices for a couple of years now, as it was introduced in iOS 13 back in 2019.
A) You go to the police, Apple will provide them with the name of the AirTag owner.
B) In the end, it is linked to an AppleID. Sure, you can create an AppleID under a fake name. But when push comes to shove, Apple does know a number of things about an AppleID. You‘d have to hide behind a lot of proxies to ensure Apple cannot link an AppleID to something.
If that's the case I can't imagine the location data would be accurate enough to be used for stalking. You'd simply learn "they passed by this subway station some time in the last 24 hours" but not "they are currently located at this address". If you can't track it to the location of that specific person's device, I feel that it's the same as not being able to track that person's location. You can only track it to the location of someone else who had tracking turned on.
Sure, but the range of a cell tower is several miles. The range of an AirTag is several feet. I don't think the data you would get about the AirTag would be very useful for tracking someone in this case, it would only tell you a rough location and time that the person passed by someone with an iPhone.
It makes sense that it would not notify his friend. He is leaving it sit on the table, but he is going places, so it is not following him around. If his friend throws it in his pocket for a few days so it stays in proximity of the phone while moving around, he is very likely to see a notification.
Making this overly sensitive could be really annoying to everyone around. Jump on commuter train with 30 other people that all have airtags and an hour later everyone's phone is going off with airtags following them. Everyone is disabling each other's airtags. Or daily time spent at the office starts triggering everyones airtags after a few days. (Ignore the current COVID aspect, that will end at some point)
Making this overly sensitive could be really annoying to everyone around. Jump on commuter train with 30 other people that all have airtags and an hour later everyone's phone is going off with airtags following them. Everyone is disabling each other's airtags. Or daily time spent at the office starts triggering everyones airtags after a few days. (Ignore the current COVID aspect, that will end at some point)
This is already sort of there, although it's a double-edged sword, as it will prevent you from tracking your own items as well.
You can find it by going into the iPhone Settings app, tapping your name at the top, and then tapping Find My->Find My iPhone, and turning off "Find My network."
This will still allow you to share your location and use the normal Find My iPhone feature — the one that simply reports the iPhone's location directly via cellular or Wi-Fi — but you won't be able to benefit from the Find My network to locate your iPhone in the event that it's offline.
Apple could make it work just for other people's AirTags, but they're understandably reticent to do this, since it would seriously diminish the overall value of the Find My network. The fact is that it's a tit-for-tat thing — if you want to find your own items, you need to be willing to help other people find theirs too.
There are already some built-in delays due to how the Find My network operates.
For one thing, just like Find My Friends, this is not real-time tracking. Even if you're carrying someone else's AirTag on your person, it only updates the location every couple of minutes — and that's only when the owner is actively looking for it. If the owner doesn't have their own Find My app open and tracking that specific AirTag, the updates are even less frequent.
Along the same lines, an AirTag and an iPhone have to be in proximity for a certain period of time before its location is picked up and reported. Walking by somebody on the street will not report your location, much less driving by people on the freeway. You have to be in one place for a certain amount of time — or at least traveling in the same direction — before the AirTag gets picked up and reported.
Honestly, I think this whole thing is overblown. While there are legitimate reasons for some people to be worried, I don't think most people are going to have to be concerned about AirTags being planted on them.
Plus, as awareness increases, it's not too difficult for people to be reasonably careful about such things. Lets face it, because it's a sad and creepy world, most single girls already have to be far more careful than they should have to be about what they do in a bar. It's very unfortunate that "checking to see if an AirTag has been planted on you" now has to be added to that list, but it also doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to avoid for anybody who is being conscientious about their personal safety.
Do postal workers usually take the stuff they deliver with them when they visit the toilet?first of all, i was kidding — secondly tracking numbers won't show when postal workers go to use the toilet(for example)
we will soon find out!
))
Correct, but the scenario is one where a domestic abuser has access to their victim's iPhone and could therefore permanently disable this alert.
However, the actual danger scenario isn't just disabling the alert, but rather switching off the global "Item Safety Alerts" setting in the Find My app on the victim's iPhone. Doing this would apply to ALL safety alerts, not just those from family members. Plus, it's much easier to do as you can do it anytime; disabling the alert can only be done once the alert actually comes up, which would require the abuser going out for a drive with the victim's iPhone and their own AirTag to attempt to trigger the alert first.
I am not so sure about that. There was a report where a publication sent out one of their staff with an AirTag in a big city. They got intermittent reports about its location while that person was standing alone at a street corner. They attributed that to signals picked up by iPhones in cars that passed by.
If I have access to somebody‘s phone, there are plenty of ways I can use that phone to track that person.
You could send an AirTag to a YouTuber's PO Box, and track the package back to their house when they pick it up. That's just an example of harm that I could think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are other similar situations.
If I'm thinking of the same report, there wasn't enough information be sure, but it could depend on a lot of factors. At least some cars driving by somebody standing on a street corner are likely slowing down to make turns. Plus, if it's a street corner, then at least some cars are likely to be stopped for long enough periods of time while they wait to proceed at a traffic light or stop sign. People in a nearby building could have been picking up the AirTag as well.
From my own experiences, my hunch is that there's likely a polling interval of some kind, and if you happen to hit it at just the right time, then yes, an AirTag could be picked up as you're walking by somebody, but it's by no means guaranteed. I definitely couldn't make it happen in my testing, but I also didn't try it more than a dozen times, nor did I work with a concentration of multiple iPhones passing by.
On the other hand, I've seen the location for my bike inside my garage updated when I've been away from home (with no other Apple devices at home to pick it up), and I can only assume that came from a passing iPhone. In that scenario, however, at least one object was stationary, and I have no way of knowing the circumstances under which it was picked up. It could have been a neighbour or somebody parked on the street in front of my house.
Where my AirTag was picked up much more consistently, however, was in places like grocery stores, where presumably there were enough people with iPhones in the store at the same time.
That's mostly my take as well, although I think there are edge cases where an abuser could have enough access to switch off that setting, since it only takes a couple of seconds to do that while the phone is otherwise unlocked.
It's also really easy for Apple to address — just require authentication to switch it off, in the same way that you need to authenticate to disable Find My iPhone. If somebody has the victim's password, then you're absolutely right that there's no point in worrying about an AirTag, but the edge case is where the victim's iPhone is otherwise pretty locked down and they're already aware of things like Find My iPhone, and know enough to turn off location sharing.
What is this based on? Seems kinda pointless if it relies on a single audible alert and then never bothers with the iPhone alert. What if the person misses the sound?
After the audible alert, it's unlikely that AirTags would send an alert to an iPhone.
I think that is very cool. Now, if I have to ship something of value, just hide one of these in the item and ha!no more "lost" packages....I know where that sucker is.