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Are AirTags completely useless for theft recovery now?

M

macphoto861

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 20, 2021
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I purchased some AirTags to use both for protection against losing things (my wallet, for example), and for locating stolen items (bike, bag, etc.). I was aware of the anti-stalking feature, which would alert someone who appeared to have an AirTag following them after 3 days, but after I loaned an item to someone, he reported that he was notified about the presence of an unknown AirTag just an hour or so after leaving my house.

I then read that Apple subsequently shortened this time down to possibly as little as 8 hours, but again, this was only about an hour or so before this person was notified. Even 8 hours is arguably too short to be useful in locating and recovering a stolen item (especially if you don't immediately realize it's gone), but if this thing is going to notify a thief after just an hour, it would seem that AirTags are totally ineffective for this.

I realize Apple marketed this not as a theft recovery device but as a way to conveniently find misplaced items, but tracking stolen things is an obvious use case for which I suspect many people bought AirTags, and it's disappointing that they've been rendered useless for this.
 
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fischersd said:
Lots of videos on YouTube on removing the speaker (which is what I'd recommend if you want to use it for theft protection).
Click to expand...
Yeah, but that would be helpful, but wouldn't stop the notification on a thief's iPhone that an unknown AirTag is following them.
 
macphoto861 said:
I purchased some AirTags to use both for protection against losing things (my wallet, for example), and for locating stolen items (bike, bag, etc.). I was aware of the anti-stalking feature, which would alert someone who appeared to have an AirTag following them after 3 days, but after I loaned an item to someone, he reported that he was notified about the presence of an unknown AirTag just an hour or so after leaving my house.

I then read that Apple subsequently shortened this time down to possibly as little as 8 hours, but again, this was only about an hour or so before this person was notified. Even 8 hours is arguably too short to be useful in locating and recovering a stolen item (especially if you don't immediately realize it's gone), but if this thing is going to notify a thief after just an hour, it would seem that AirTags are totally ineffective for this.

I realize Apple marketed this not as a theft recovery device but as a way to conveniently find misplaced items, but tracking stolen things is an obvious use case for which I suspect many people bought AirTags, and it's disappointing that they've been rendered useless for this.
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The airtags have always had a short notification period when they’re moving with somebody else without the owner present.

The whole 3 day thing was that if it moved after being away from the owner for 3 days it would start pinging.

I tested this with my OH. I left my iPhone at home and brought my keys with an airtag. It notified her after about 45 minutes and this was on release day too.
 
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It could potentially have some benefit.

I had an iPad stolen from my office. I used Find My to play a sound, as the office had been ransacked and I wanted to see if it was somewhere in the piles of crap strewn about. Didn't hear it, didn't think about it. Turns out, a few miles away, two dudes got into a shouting match over whose idea it was to steal a trackable iPad and then they chucked it out the window. Cops recovered it from a ditch, because of course Find My showed the location.

Very near the ditch was a car that was stolen from the building parked in the driveway of the thieves. Real bright fellas. That would've been about 5 years ago, so they've got about 5 years left on their sentence then.

I'm not sure Apple has ever marketed these as theft recovery. More finding something you've lost or misplaced. I would imagine Apple's legal team is terrified of the first "My spouse decided to go after a stolen bicycle and got shot confronting the thieves" lawsuit.

I've noticed the same though. My wife and I put AirTags on our keys and the first time I drove my wife's car after we did that, I got a notification within a few minutes of pulling out of the driveway.
 
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So, who makes a device that can help you track down and find a stolen item like a bike or a car without notifying the thief?
 
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hakr100 said:
So, who makes a device that can help you track down and find a stolen item like a bike or a car without notifying the thief?
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If you dig around in this forum (or on Apple's site) you'll see there's already at least one bike manufacturer that has built FindMy into their bikes (think it's likely a given they'll be using a little less aggressive of anti-stalking profile than Apple does with their AirTags - you'd have to go through the T's & C's of what Apple stipulates for 3rd parties to comply with their FindMy network rules to see how much wiggle room they have).

There's also a thread in this forum about AirTag'ing your car. Some of us have done that. Place it somewhere that they won't hear the chirp (or remove the speaker), and you have at least several hours before they may get any "an airtag is travelling with you" notifications - again, that's only if they have an iPhone - if the thief is sporting an Android, they'll have no idea. You can create notifications for your airtags as well - notify when left behind will tell you when something that you are tracking is moving away from your iPhone. Apple needs to adjust some of their logic when it comes to Watch vs iPhone though - my phone was up in the apartment the other day and I was walking with my watch and keys - the iPhone got the notification that my keys were left behind (but, the authenticated watch on my wrist instead should have received the notification that my iPhone was left behind).
 
So if I put one of these airtags into my kid's (elementary school) backpack so I can track him (yes I am one of those parents who would like to know if he is on the bus or still in school) then anyone who is on the same bus and has an iphone (older kids, bus driver) , will get a message that unknown airtag is following them? lol
I hope that the airtag at least will not start beeping, right? (the 3 day away rule?)
 
8mrg81 said:
So if I put one of these airtags into my kid's (elementary school) backpack so I can track him (yes I am one of those parents who would like to know if he is on the bus or still in school) then anyone who is on the same bus and has an iphone (older kids, bus driver) , will get a message that unknown airtag is following them? lol
I hope that the airtag at least will not start beeping, right? (the 3 day away rule?)
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It's not 3 days anymore - it's hours. Yes - likely multiple people will get the notification. (the paired device isn't with the tag, so any logic Apple put in place for commuting isn't relevant).
 
I have one hidden in my Honda rebel 1100, had my cousin borrow it while I borrowed his harley. He rode all the way to San Francisco and went to some local restaurant he owns a android; but the perfect thing was I kept getting location notices almost every where he was at because he passed cars that people had iphones. he literally parked the motorcycle in his friends garage and i still kept getting it updated. I have the airtag hidden well you won’t find it easily cough under the battery cough. It works well for finding my motorcycle unless they take it to a shop you will find your items quickly as long as you have the airtag hidden really well. I also heard you can open it up and disconnect the speaker also.

edit also latest firmware no one got notifications on their iphones , especially my cousin only owns a samsung
 
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Somehow I got a pinging from my keys on my pockets while I was chiiling browsing reddit on my iPhone in bed. Technically it wasn't supposed to happen since i'm home and with my phone in range of the Airtag. That was Weird.
 
Two things Apple needs to do to improve these IMHO: Family sharing & AirTag behavior. That way you could set an AirTag to have a theft tracking behavior, where it wouldn't let thieves know an item is being tracked, or have it be a pet tracker so you get notified if your pet goes so far out of your proximity, etc. I'm sure there are dozens of other scenarios for setting the behavior. Family Sharing because the person who set up the tag isn't necessarily going to be around to look for the item/pet/etc.
 
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Durandal777 said:
Two things Apple needs to do to improve these IMHO: Family sharing & AirTag behavior. That way you could set an AirTag to have a theft tracking behavior, where it wouldn't let thieves know an item is being tracked, or have it be a pet tracker so you get notified if your pet goes so far out of your proximity, etc. I'm sure there are dozens of other scenarios for setting the behavior. Family Sharing because the person who set up the tag isn't necessarily going to be around to look for the item/pet/etc.
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Family Sharing is definitely on many people's wish list. You're not going to get the disabling of the alerts for anti-theft purposes - that's specifically to protect people's privacy (anti-stalking measures).

Now, if someone would go through the T's & C's of Apple's partner agreement for 3rd party devices - we could see if Apple would allow 3rd parties to have different policies (eg - there's a bicycle that has one built in - you definitely don't want that one, which is explicitly for anti-theft - notifying the rider that they're being tracked.
 
fischersd said:
If you dig around in this forum (or on Apple's site) you'll see there's already at least one bike manufacturer that has built FindMy into their bikes (think it's likely a given they'll be using a little less aggressive of anti-stalking profile than Apple does with their AirTags - you'd have to go through the T's & C's of what Apple stipulates for 3rd parties to comply with their FindMy network rules to see how much wiggle room they have).

There's also a thread in this forum about AirTag'ing your car. Some of us have done that. Place it somewhere that they won't hear the chirp (or remove the speaker), and you have at least several hours before they may get any "an airtag is travelling with you" notifications - again, that's only if they have an iPhone - if the thief is sporting an Android, they'll have no idea. You can create notifications for your airtags as well - notify when left behind will tell you when something that you are tracking is moving away from your iPhone. Apple needs to adjust some of their logic when it comes to Watch vs iPhone though - my phone was up in the apartment the other day and I was walking with my watch and keys - the iPhone got the notification that my keys were left behind (but, the authenticated watch on my wrist instead should have received the notification that my iPhone was left behind).
Click to expand...
This. And, if you put even the slightest effort into hiding the AirTag, a thief might get the notification, but they would still have to find the thing to discard or disable it. If I lived in a high crime area, I would have already done this. Yes, I know that doesn’t make us immune to car theft!
 
Durandal777 said:
Two things Apple needs to do to improve these IMHO: Family sharing & AirTag behavior. That way you could set an AirTag to have a theft tracking behavior, where it wouldn't let thieves know an item is being tracked, or have it be a pet tracker so you get notified if your pet goes so far out of your proximity, etc. I'm sure there are dozens of other scenarios for setting the behavior. Family Sharing because the person who set up the tag isn't necessarily going to be around to look for the item/pet/etc.
Click to expand...
I have one on our little Houdini dog’s collar. I do wish apple would add proximity capabilities, though.
 
I have one that is activated and never leaves the house. Might put it on my cat. Occasionally the airtag will start chiming for no reason. It is connected to my wifes phone. It chimes for no reason whether she is there or not. Any ideas?
 
el-John-o said:
It could potentially have some benefit.

I had an iPad stolen from my office. I used Find My to play a sound, as the office had been ransacked and I wanted to see if it was somewhere in the piles of crap strewn about. Didn't hear it, didn't think about it. Turns out, a few miles away, two dudes got into a shouting match over whose idea it was to steal a trackable iPad and then they chucked it out the window. Cops recovered it from a ditch, because of course Find My showed the location.

Very near the ditch was a car that was stolen from the building parked in the driveway of the thieves. Real bright fellas. That would've been about 5 years ago, so they've got about 5 years left on their sentence then.

I'm not sure Apple has ever marketed these as theft recovery. More finding something you've lost or misplaced. I would imagine Apple's legal team is terrified of the first "My spouse decided to go after a stolen bicycle and got shot confronting the thieves" lawsuit.

I've noticed the same though. My wife and I put AirTags on our keys and the first time I drove my wife's car after we did that, I got a notification within a few minutes of pulling out of the driveway.
Click to expand...
They got 10 years? I was going to say this wasn't the USA, but looks like it was. Well, if they got 10 years, they will likely serve a fraction of that.
 
Copied and edited from another (my response) thread:

Yeah the "privacy concerns" will render these useless for all scenarios that are not of the "I forget stuff" variety.
I cannot put these in: Tools, Electronics, Cars, Bikes... etc.
Now these high-theft items are just going to be "free airtag included" stolen property. Yes, Apple sycophants will immediately feel strongly compelled to whine and tell us that "The Airtag will be useless to the thief" but that's pointless if it's not mine anymore, it's just a stolen Airtag now.
Instead of being such babies about it they should leave it alone entirely unless they wanted to simply include a "Show Airtags Near Me" feature. Also the Android and iPhone app that tells you the Serial Number should include a contact method, like email or phone number, you could enable so on the 1-in-100 chance the item was found by a honest-to-god decent human being, they could return it.
The paranoid cheaters and other fools can go sweep their surroundings and at least the crackheads might even be deterred from stealing something that obviously has a tracker embedded.

There is just no need to inform the ignorant against their will.

The answer is: YES. They are basically useless now, unless you want to use them to annoy yourself about your own crap.
 
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