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Apple Find My to Tim Sweeney:

"We have located your missing/stolen laptop.

To find it's location, please pay 30% of the laptop price via our InAppPurchase system or we can redirect you to the thief's third party processing system and we are unable to assist you further.

How would you like to proceed?"
 
Apparently he didn't bother to use FileVault to prevent someone from getting into it and creating a new admin account to get into it.

As for the creepy aspect he lives in an odd world when perceiving a feature as creepy that doesn't serve to track strangers. How it's used is the issue. Not the intended feature. He specifically pointed out the vigilante aspect to this. It's up to the person as to whether the police get involved.
 
You know… one time I had to run into a store for baby formula. Wife had the flu, and having a child less than a year old on top of that made for a very zombie-like, autopilot few days… I forgot to lock my car in my haste. I came out to someone clearly having rummaged through it. They took my quarters out of the coin holder. I must have lost a whole $2.50. Outside of the huge ick factor, I didn’t do anything about it and treated it as a learning experience… that’s how this guy treats a laptop potentially worth a few grand. Out of touch is an understatement.
 
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What a stupid trashbag. I hope Apple smacks him upside the head again.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to sit quiet and let the guy make a fool of himself. The only concern with that is that the EU might actually listen to him and require Apple to disable this feature!!
 
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The real point is


The real point is that this service is against GDPR. To manage somebody else data (the location of the "tag"), I need somebody else approval... In addition, if my mobile is used to track somebody else, I need to be informed and approve this transaction.

Please note the data encryption is formally a risk mitigation, to reduce the impact in case somebody is able to stole the data. But using encryption doesn't allow you to manage somebody else data.
When you sell or give away a device it’s no longer yours and yes step one is disable tracking. When someone steals something it’s not magically the other persons property.

The mental gymnastics to protect criminals is insane.
 
I've had a laptop stolen (fresh software installed and Find My turned off). I would have been very pleased to have the thief's location to pass to the police!

Pretending to care about the privacy of someone who stole his laptop? Anything to fuel his war against Apple!
 
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I'm sure there are others that try hard to compete, but this guy is one of the most massive bellends ever given the role of CEO.
 
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At this stage I think his hatred of Apple has crossed over to an unhealthy level and he comes across disturbingly unhinged upstairs.

How have investors not stepped in and replaced him yet? Baffles me. He’s clearly not very well!
 
Re This is basically what LoJack was for cars before the iPhone came out.
And computrace was available a long time before this in and installed in the BIOS of most commercially available laptops and desktops.

It has even creepier functions as well than find my .. e.g. Remote access, gps, webcam access, software manipulation.
 
Lots of knee jerk groupthink dismissiveness in this thread, but I think he has a point. I've often been creeped out by Find My's ablility to function as a surveilance tool. Sorry, but snooping the location of spouses and children, unbeknownst to them, is creepy. Tim's example could just as easily be a case where you legitimately buy a used laptop and now someone is able to track your location.
 
Lots of knee jerk groupthink dismissiveness in this thread, but I think he has a point. I've often been creeped out by Find My's ablility to function as a surveilance tool. Sorry, but snooping the location of spouses and children, unbeknownst to them, is creepy. Tim's example could just as easily be a case where you legitimately buy a used laptop and now someone is able to track your location.
Tim doesn't have any points and based on his own past tirades and business privacy policies is hypocritical at best.

Anyone sharing location to other family members would be aware of it since you have to enable it and it's not creepy to check in on your loved ones. Like anything, it's open abuse but to outright call it creepy is disingenuous.

Tim's example and your 2nd hand mention doesn't apply here.
 
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