This sounds like PR talk. Apple is really expecting everyone to research safety of one of their products? Things like this are reasons why this 15+ year Apple lover have started to care less and less about Apple products and news. They might be successful and making money now, but those tides can change quickly. Yes, I know people have said that for years, but you can only throw so many stones at a glass house before it finally breaks.
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Apple Announces AirTag Updates to Address Unwanted Tracking
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What do Tile and Samsung do?! AirTag had anti tracking features from day one, they are just refining. The Irony is that a lot of people do not want this behavior as they want to use it as an anti theft device …
No you will not get an alert, only when the owner is not in reach of it’s own AirTag you will get an alert (and only after some time not immediately). So your comment makes no sense.
On my work van key yeah I just leave the whole lot, my home keys I remove the car key off it.
You’re right, this is a really tricky product. And given Apple stance on privacy, Apple is going to have to be on the defense moving forward with this product to make it as secure as possible, even though that’s probably not entirely possible.
So I can certainly see some revisions coming in the future with the AirTags, but I mentioned it before in this thread already, I’m not sure how long this product will actually be in their lineup. I’d say for a few years at minimum, but long-term, is it profitable enough for them to keep the AirTag as an accessory product or are the ‘risks outweighing the rewards’ per se.
Also people without phones? How do you figure that will work?
Yeah but would Google be interested in that, though? I don't think that's at all a given.
There are at times very transparent about things. For example, the CSAM detection system that everyone here seems to hate, was documented and described in great detail throughout many documents and even a paper.
You can also opt out on the iPhone, so...
“AirTag is intended solely to track items that belong to you.”
Whilst these updates are great for prevention of unwanted tracking of people (which is of course important), it unfortunately makes them even more useless for tracking stolen goods.
If I have an AirTag in a bag with a valuable item in, and my car is broken into and that bag is stolen, these updates will surely alert the criminal pretty immediately, and help them locate the AirTag.
So what are AirTags actually useful for? Locating you lost house keys? Locating a lost item of little value to a theft? Is that it? ??♂️
Whilst these updates are great for prevention of unwanted tracking of people (which is of course important), it unfortunately makes them even more useless for tracking stolen goods.
If I have an AirTag in a bag with a valuable item in, and my car is broken into and that bag is stolen, these updates will surely alert the criminal pretty immediately, and help them locate the AirTag.
So what are AirTags actually useful for? Locating you lost house keys? Locating a lost item of little value to a theft? Is that it? ??♂️
yes. for some reason people seem to be unable to understand that airtags are a solution for lost items, not stolen items
yes you just answered your own question, they are for locating your own item you have lost, e.g. locating your keys in your house. unfortunately there is no way to be able to give people the power to track a thief with your stolen item without also giving them the power to stalk people without their consent.
I do wonder why people would want to use Airtags for stalking. Aren't there cheaper and/or better gadgets that do that?
Like trackers for pets for example.
Like trackers for pets for example.
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In this case you were supposed to be concerned about people not Apple.
If an airtag is tracking you that's not yours, Apple should make it trackable to you, so you can locate the airtag owner and...return it.
Sure they would, for the right price. Google pays apple billions of dollars per year for google to remain the default search. I'm not saying Apple needs to pay billions for this feature with google, but something could have been worked out. After all this does not affect google's bottom line.
A beeping unattended bag at an airport would probably result with the security going bananas.
The point wasn't equivalence - the point was that Pandora's box was wide open before AirTags were released.
Stuff like T-Mobile's SyncUp Tracker or Verizon's SmartLocator aren't exactly unheard of products from tiny unknown companies.
... and there's no means to detect if being tracked with one of these.
That's a mischaracterization. Mitigations were present the day AirTags launched. They're being enhanced/adjusted as would be anticipated.
Care to discuss what mitigation strategy Tile has or Samsung has with their SmartTags and how they compare to Apple's?
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AirTags aren't marketed as theft-recovery trackers. They're intended for you to find stuff you've lost/misplaced, or alert you that you've left something behind. They're not marketed as a device to track stuff that's been stolen.
Product page might help you better understand the intent: https://www.apple.com/airtag/
Right, so they are useless for anything except saving you 2 minutes of finding your keys you left at home. This is such a dumb take I wish people would stop posting it. When apple first released it, it was a wonderful product that could be used to track stolen items and do so much more. I was going to buy 4 of them, 1 for my laptop bag, 1 for my car, 1 for my bike, and 1 for my keys. Same with my wife.
Apple then began nerfing it, so now its useless for us and for many other people in the name of whiney people who complain about literally nothing (given there are far better-stalking tools).
Apple could have easily made it so the airtag goes into lost/stolen mode after 8 hours or whatever and only the police or whatever can track it from there. That way it would have been an antitheft and antilost device.
For me it’s not about Apple vs. anyone. I think the whole concept is opening Pandora’s Box. You don’t have to agree. I’m not arguing, I just don’t like ‘em.
My understanding - based on reading posts in the Airtag subforum - is that it's several hours (or longer) before there's any notification. Thus you'd have a window of time for recovering something if that's your use case. I see nothing in the article suggesting that delay would be shortened.
Might be worth reading some of people's actual experiences with the devices before passing judgement on something you've not actually used?
You are already able to opt out:
How to opt out of the Find My network
Participating in Appleu2019s crowdsourced network for devices and AirTags is optional.
www.macworld.com