Criminals in Montreal Using AirTags to Steal Vehicles

[germinator]

Click bait. This story was spread before, and now it's being brought up again.
It did not make sense then, and it doesn't make any more sense now.
Please let me know how putting an AirTag on a car facilitates its theft. I followed this news and many discussion forums on the topic back then, and no one could explain it.
Now the new hypothesis is that this is being used to smuggle drugs. It's a little better than the car theft theory, but still not much. If you have that kind of criminal enterprise in place, why not just smuggle the drug yourself? It must be a small package if it must not be discovered by the car owner.

 

[germinator]

Sure, but the airtag tells you which suburban garage / driveway the car’s parked in overnight which you targeted during the day.

Research car remote relay attacks to understand why that’s important

Still doesn't make any sense. It's harder to steal a car at night, likely parked in a garage, than it is to steal it from a shopping mall parking.

 

[joeblow7777]

But you don't need an Airtag to do that.

Seems a lot better than just suspiciously patrolling neighbourhoods at night hoping you find worthwhile targets.

 

[deeddawg]

Why not just go to a secluded area at 4 am then? There's a piece that's missing.

Easier to scan daytime mall / shopping / office parking lots during the day and AirTag the target make/model cars for overnight theft than to cruise suburban neighborhoods at night looking in garages and driveways for those target makes/models.

 

[deeddawg]

Still doesn't make any sense. It's harder to steal a car at night, likely parked in a garage, than it is to steal it from a shopping mall parking.

Research car remote relay attacks.

WAY easier to do a man-in-the-middle relay/spoof of the keyless fob in the home driveway where the fob is nearby than in some random public parking lot where the fob location isn’t known.

 

[amartinez1660]

Ahh Montreal, it’s like LA, Chicago, NY or any other very high crime city but 10 years behind.
Don’t you worry, it will catch up and get there… just check how law enforcers on TV (albeit that wasn’t a Montreal one) suggest to leave the keys on the front door in case thieves want to steal your car. Lovely.
(/s)

 

[noraa]

I can’t believe Apple actually released AirTags onto the market and didn’t see all these issues with stalking/thefts occurring.

The only thing people seem to have found useful in real world experience seems to be ability to track their luggage when travelling.

Just like the VisionPro where people suddenly seem to want to watch any movie they can to justify what they paid and feel part of ‘the future’ despite probably not have cared about a movie for months/years prior to the headset going on their face.

Be interesting if Apple is foolish enough to release another Gen of these trackers. Considering it hasn’t happened yet, maybe they’ll pretend the thing never came out and move quietly on.

Tell me you’re a troll without saying you’re a troll….

My mom left her keys at a restaurant, and was easily able to locate them because she had an AirTag on the same keychain. A friend found a lost wallet because of an AirTag. And personally, I recovered my stolen e-scooter because I had an AirTag hidden on it.

AirTags are incredibly useful, just because you can do nefarious things with them doesn’t negate that point. Hell, you can do far, far worse thins with an iPhone, I suppose Apple should’ve foreseen all the ways in which illegal things can be done on an iPhone and never released it?

 

[noraa]

Why wouldn't they use Tile instead? Too much attention is on AirTags now. And it can backfire badly. In any case, if my iPhone warns me that an AirTag is in my car, that's the thieves actually letting me know that they're coming for me, allowing me the time and attention to set a a sting operation to catch them. Of course, I'd transfer the tag to my neighbor's car first. And if the thieves are unlucky enough to tag a particular type of guy, the person could park at a secluded spot, hide in the woods and snipe them. They could be setting themselves up.

Presumably because Tile doesn’t have nearly as vast coverage as the Find My network (at least in North America, not sure about elsewhere…)

 

[SanderEvers]

Surely there are better and probably cheaper trackers they could use that don’t have anti-stalker features?

Indeed, most trackers use GPS and cellular to locate them and then allow the attacker/thief to track them over the internet. Far more accurate than an AirTag ever could. And using AirTags also notifies the target making it quite useless.

 

[svish]

Sad to see AirTags being used for such activities. Better to be aware of the safety features present.

 

[wigby]

How would they be used to help steal a car? If your car is parked somewhere they can stash a tag in it without notice, why wouldn't they just steal it then?

It’s not part of the story but many thieves track the vehicles to victims’ homes too. A nice car generally ends up at a nice home so when that car is gone, the breaking and entering is much easier to pull off.

 

[scorpio vega]

I can’t believe Apple actually released AirTags onto the market and didn’t see all these issues with stalking/thefts occurring.

The only thing people seem to have found useful in real world experience seems to be ability to track their luggage when travelling.

Just like the VisionPro where people suddenly seem to want to watch any movie they can to justify what they paid and feel part of ‘the future’ despite probably not have cared about a movie for months/years prior to the headset going on their face.

Be interesting if Apple is foolish enough to release another Gen of these trackers. Considering it hasn’t happened yet, maybe they’ll pretend the thing never came out and move quietly on.

That’s a silly take. Any tech can be used for bad things. Doesn’t mean Apple is wrong for making it because it doesn’t fit your use

 

[DanielPrice]

Surely there are better and probably cheaper trackers they could use that don’t have anti-stalker features?

Criminals don't want to leave the Apple Eco system though 😂

 

[redcarlsen]

There is the "Identify Found item" command in the Find My app, but I suspect the info it provides is only as good as what the AirTag owner entered. I tried it just now with my wife's AirTag and the command would not work, so I can't verify exactly what info it gives...


Because it is much easier to wait and see if the car ends up somewhere much more secluded and private and then steal it at 4:00 in the morning when a lot of the world is likely asleep. Not speaking from experience, but the logic's not complicated. I don't think we're talking about entry-level cars that are being targeted here.

You’re really putting a damper on my new business idea.
I was planning on leaving my 30 yr old Hyundai clunker around various parts of Montreal to collect free AirTags and then sell them.

 

[redcarlsen]

We really need to bump up our punishments for stupid stuff like this: theft has always been one the things that pisses me off the most.

Back in the day, if you stole a person’s horse, you got hung tell dead. Most people work for what they have and can’t easily replace it.

I’m with you. Society should be filled with one-handed, castrated, and hanged folks.
I have literally been to developing nations that have far less crime, because they are not soft on criminals.

 

[tbabb]

My longtime co-worker bought his wife a new IPhone and setup "find my phone" so he could track her whereabouts. As it turned out, it was easier to track her by the credit card email notifications for purchases. 😂

 

[Tsjoolder]

Should be an easy fix: sic the cops on anyone having dozens of AirTags to their name

 

[Tsjoolder]

I’m with you. Society should be filled with one-handed, castrated, and hanged folks.
I have literally been to developing nations that have far less crime, because they are not soft on criminals.

Ouch, these are tactics from other parts of the world which e.g. in Western society are called ‘barbaric’ and against which wars have been waged for those reasons.

It’s always funny to see these kinds of double standards in public opinion.

We have a long way to go as a species…

To the moderator friends: this is not intended as a political statement, it is a factual observation about the content of a fellow user’s post…

 

[Tsjoolder]

We really need to bump up our punishments for stupid stuff like this: theft has always been one the things that pisses me off the most.

Back in the day, if you stole a person’s horse, you got hung tell dead. Most people work for what they have and can’t easily replace it.

Yes, let’s give everyone clubs, pitchforks and maybe some tar and feathers… who need police and the legal system!

If that doesn’t embody “think different” (this is a forum about Apple after all), then I don’t know what would

 

[Tubamajuba]

I can’t believe Apple actually released AirTags onto the market and didn’t see all these issues with stalking/thefts occurring.

The only thing people seem to have found useful in real world experience seems to be ability to track their luggage when travelling.

Just like the VisionPro

Did anything in this post mention the Vision Pro? Go post your 99 Theses of everything you don't like about Apple somewhere else.

 

[MTShipp]

But mostly useless. It takes a long time (days or weeks) for any alert to appear that you’re being tracked IF you have a recent device AND it’s running a recent version of iOS AND you have all the various setting enabled. So basically, the feature to detect a tag following you is mostly useless.

In my experience only, I agree. My daughter’s Kia was attempted to be stolen with that Kia USB hack but her immobilizer prevented it. The car was in shop for repair of the damage for 3 weeks. During that time, she was using my spare vehicle, which contained an AirTag. I made her aware in case she got the “following you” message. She said she never did. Never heard a beep, no notification on her iPhone 14, and I was able to see where my car was from my “Find My”. Additionally, she does not live with me so it was not near my iPhone periodically to reset anything. So for 3 weeks no notifications. And no, she is not on my AppleID family account so it did not associate her with me.

 

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

What's incredible to me is Apple not seizing the opportunity to have iPhones search, find and alert you about all Bluetooth/4G/Wifi devices and trackers if they're continuously present within a certain distance to you, or stay within a certain distance to you when you're moving, and the trackers/devices aren't known to your iPhone or are devices signed into your iCloud account.

It would then prompt you to confirm if you know these devices.

Probably something that would cost a lot of power.

But maybe an algorithm could be checking in the background infrequently and then amp it up if it starts detecting what it believes to be a tracker or unknown device near you, following you.

 

[shinemoon]

Do android phones also get alert for unknown AirTag..

 

[toobravetosave]

Meanwhile, the NYPD is giving out AirTags in a PR move to cut down on theft (despite Apple themselves being extremely clear that this is not the designed use-case of the device).

it’s pretty clear anti theft is the designed use-case

apple is just lying through its teeth because the lawyers saw that would be untenable advertising position

don’t fall for what they say watch what they do

 

[CarAnalogy]

No, our police are telling people to leave the keyfobs by the front door, so when they break in to steal the keys they are right there for them.

I am not making this up.

This may be the single most Canadian thing I have ever heard.