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I feel like the airtags I bought to help prevent theft of my bikes just became useless. They already notified a thief of something following with them, now they're easier to find and remove. Not a great solution for my situation to be sure. Anyone else in the same situation?

While they mention earlier alerting, I don't see any specifics mentioned. Presumably there will remain a window of time in which you might can find where your bikes have gotten to and confront the thief to get them back.
 
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my problem exactly. I have one on each of my bikes and one in my vehicle. All the airtags I have are basically useless now. Not sure the use case for airtags anymore beyond just being forgetful with your keys.
 
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I had to take the airtag off my dog collar because it kept beeping when I was out of the house and my dog would run to my wife scared

I put an airtag in my wife's car and now whenever I take it out it goes off and I get tracking messages, these updates have made airtags pointless for anything besides your own keys
 
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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.
They’ve been very useful in finding my Apple TV remotes. Before the AirTags they could go missing in my house for months at a time.
 
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I had to take the airtag off my dog collar because it kept beeping when I was out of the house and my dog would run to my wife scared
That's the no-bark feature of Airtags.

No really, they were not built for dog tracking or kid tracking or living thing tracking. They have dog collars with cellular and GPS attached and it would have a far better chance at tracking a dog since dogs usually run away into the woods and away from people walking around with iPhones. For kids there's the Apple Watch family setup.
 
I honestly think this product will be removed from the Apple ecosystem sooner rather than later. The burden to protect oneself against misuse falls on the victim (need newer phone, latest OS, enable Find My, etc) . I can see many, many lawsuits heading Apples way. I don’t think it’s enough of a revenue generator for Apple to put up with the (potential) hassles.
 
My wife complains that when she borrows my car (and keys with an AirTag) that she gets annoying alerts and the AirTag on my keys won’t shut up.

Is there a way to prevent this that I’ve missed?
 
Who knew that to prevent bad people from using an AirTag for nefarious purposes, all Apple had to do was issue them a stern warning during setup. They should follow this up with a strongly worded email and a text that uses the phrase “or else”.

Problem solved.
 
Apple didn't market this as an anti-theft device. It is just as everyone seems to complain that it does. Helps you find LOST stuff. Whether that be keys, backpacks, (Apple) TV remotes, purses, wallets, etc. It definitely wasn't intended to be anti-theft and they have only made the anti-stalking use cases for these more difficult.

So good on Apple. Sure, maybe some of the latest fixes make it a little more annoying for people using them as intended, but see my previous post for the easiest fix to those:

How about family sharing of AirTags?

That should be priority after the privacy issues of course.

Simple family sharing of "Items" tab resolves the headaches for those of us using these things <as intended>. I can already see family devices on the "Devices" tab in Find My. So it should be an easy thing to do.
 
Apple didn't market this as an anti-theft device. It is just as everyone seems to complain that it does. Helps you find LOST stuff. Whether that be keys, backpacks, (Apple) TV remotes, purses, wallets, etc. It definitely wasn't intended to be anti-theft and they have only made the anti-stalking use cases for these more difficult.

So good on Apple. Sure, maybe some of the latest fixes make it a little more annoying for people using them as intended, but see my previous post for the easiest fix to those:



Simple family sharing of "Items" tab resolves the headaches for those of us using these things <as intended>. I can already see family devices on the "Devices" tab in Find My. So it should be an easy thing to do.

More like Apple did it as a cya move. Like some others.
If Apple did any market analysis (assume they did) they would be well aware of the amount and questions / complaints about the use of existing devices for theft deterrence, monitoring, and spying.
 
I have remote access apps for all of my TVs. Don't sweat the remotes any more. ;)
I have the remote on my iPhone and iPads but the remotes are better for the games my kids play and I don’t want to hand my kids one of My devices to use the Apple TV. Plus if I’m out my husband will just take one of mj iPads to use as a remote and then just leave it out. One day I came back and found my Apple Pencil lying on the floor of the dining room?
 
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Interesting little read I found on Reddit - NYT article

Here is the NYT link….
I read this article earlier today and it just shows how big of a mountain everyone is making out of this molehill.

LandAirSea says they sell 180,000 GPS trackers every year, and gets about 30 subpoenas about potentially malicious trackers. Doesn't say how many of those actually turn out to be malicious.

I imagine that the good of turning this whole notification system off and allowing the trackers to actually be able to function as anti-theft devices would far outweigh the nefarious uses all of these scaremongers keep trying to exaggerate.
 
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My wife complains that when she borrows my car (and keys with an AirTag) that she gets annoying alerts and the AirTag on my keys won’t shut up.

Is there a way to prevent this that I’ve missed?
Well unless Apple implements Family Sharing for these - I am afraid you‘ll need a 2nd pair of keys. You might also get one of these few BMWs that support CarKeys in Wallet :)
 
I wonder when the “totalitarian government” edition SKU will be produced as a condition of Apple doing business in a country. ?
 
People need to work on a way to make them impossible to remove from a bike or bag, that would solve part of the problem. If someone has stolen your bike and are notified they are being tracked, they are have the choice to get off the bike or put down your bag and stop being tracked.
 
Okay so I get all the reasons why these things are great and I accept and am happy with them. But what about the reason the device was developed and then purchased in the first place? You know the use and ability to find items when they’re not just misplaced but stolen. How will my stolen property fare and be protected against a thief with my privacy protected AirTag and these privacy features enacted? Where’s the protection for people using these for the reasons they were meant?
 
Okay so I get all the reasons why these things are great and I accept and am happy with them. But what about the reason the device was developed and then purchased in the first place? You know the use and ability to find items when they’re not just misplaced but stolen. How will my stolen property fare and be protected against a thief with my privacy protected AirTag and these privacy features enacted? Where’s the protection for people using these for the reasons they were meant?
It is not an anti-theft device.
 
I have the remote on my iPhone and iPads but the remotes are better for the games my kids play and I don’t want to hand my kids one of My devices to use the Apple TV. Plus if I’m out my husband will just take one of mj iPads to use as a remote and then just leave it out. One day I came back and found my Apple Pencil lying on the floor of the dining room?

... and neither my iPhone or iPad remote will adjust the volume on any of our televisions.

Perhaps it would with newer sets, but why spend the money to replace something that's working fine?

(we don't lose the AppleTV remotes either, so...)
 
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