i got my Airtags day 1. I then somehow lost them later in that same day. I tracked them down and received the Airtag. It was scary
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Has anybody actually genuinely lost something outside, in the wild and found it with an AirTag yet?
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mazz0 said:
I'm not worried about anyone else's phone, per se, my concern lay with Apple deciding to volunteer an individual's location to someone or some agency based on crowdsourced tracking.
Nope, it's entirely in house. It's also not really "your" location per se (unless you're letting other people track YOU in Find My) - your iPhone will be sending the approximate location of the Air Tag.
I'm certain the tracking is "in house". The issue is when you're already renting a room at the house (iCloud) and enjoying the amenities, and the owner (Apple) of that house decides that they're going to hand the keys over to someone who doesn't play nice.
But I guess I should clarify this: my objection isn't to the AirTag, but rather the depth of Apple's tracking abilities revealed by this thing. They didn't suddenly come up with the crowdsourced tracking to implement the Tag. Its always been there, but now with the release of the Tag, crowd track is front and center. I guess they felt it was better to hide it in plain sight, and reassure people it can't be used against them, because Apple said so.
Heh...much safer in this ecosystem than Android. Google watches EVERYTHING.
Yes, there's always potential for bad actors to create problems. That's never going to go away.
And if some of this is paranoia about government oversight...lawful access gave the Feds the keys to the kingdom a long time ago. Best to shrug it off.
Surely an individual’s location is wherever their phone is, not where some AirTag is, and you don’t need the FindMy network for locating phones - the phone has GPS and cellular of its own. FindMy (and AirTags) add nothing to the theoretical ability of Apple to track your location and pass that information on.
I've said this in other threads: saying "Apple sucks less than everyone else" is not good ad copy.
No, best to figure out ways to make it more difficult for them.
See my previous post: this crowd sourced tracking has now spread to Watches, Macs, iDevices. When they can't join cellular or Wifi they get picked up by this Find My mesh net. Thats right from the main Find My page.
Let me try to put this in a different light, so bear with me for a moment...
If you lose your keys, and you have an Air Tag attached, you looking for your keys via Find My AirTag does not remotely turn on any beacon in the tag. It broadcasts regularly if not continuously. If Macs and iDevices and Watches work the same way, that means that they broadcast similar tags when they're not in range of cell or Wifi. This means anyone traveling with their devices is basically wearing a huge neon sign in computer terms.
As a side note, I should point out that I've been told numerous times that having my router set to "Hidden" is bad because reasons. Like "hiding it makes you a target for people who look for hidden things" and other equally interesting reasons. But mostly because the router and attached devices will constantly be broadcast "Hi are you there?" and "Hi I'm here" all the time. Perhaps some expert here can explain how the AirTag and any other Apple device on Find My doing the exact same thing isn't bad.
I could see an entire underground hobby/business springing up of looking for anything broadcasting a Find My beacon.
Seems like a great opportunity for someone to come up with a BT Stumbler program that will make finding someone else's neat things as easy as playing Pokemon Go. Which in hindsight now seems to have been a training course and cover for people doing exactly that.
Fair enough, hadn’t occurred to me that iPhones etc would be doing the message exchange too (the same way AirTags do), but that makes sense. So your concern is that this always on communication system (whereby your iPhone is regularly trying to contact other nearby iPhones) presents hackers with a new attack vector?
That is an excellent summary of my concerns, but I have to press you a little bit on this one: you're looking at the top layer of this, think a few layers deeper. And I'm sorry if this seems a little obtuse and byzantine, but you're going to get a lot more out of this if you do the exercise as opposed to me trying to instill it. Let me give you an example, taken from previous threads where I've discussed privacy issues:
Google regularly comes under fire here and elsewhere for their slights, both real and imagined, against privacy. Even the most stalwart Google apologists here can't manage much more than "oh well, everyone is watching you, and I'm willing to trade my privacy for their excellent services, you should too or you'll get left behind". For the most part though, the ready response is either "what do you have to hide?" or "you're not important to this big company".
When I push people to understand the level of Google's invasion of their private life, they seem to think it stops with what they search for on Google.com. Some people understand it includes parsed emails and texts but don't look further. Even the Apple fans don't think any farther than this, because they always use this incredibly lame saying "At Google - YOU'RE the product!". And you can almost hear them saying "ZING!" afterwards. Its ridiculous and it shows that they have no idea of what goes on behind the scenes at Google.
Layer 1: search information including search variations
Layer 1a: how fast do you vary your searches
Layer 1b: what do you click through
Layer 1c (mobile devices) : how long do you spend on a given page? How many times do you back up?
Layer 2: emails and texts parsed
Layer 2a: what do you receive and from who?
Layer 2a1: how quickly do you read the next message ?
Layer 2b: how fast do you forward, and what do you forward?
Layer 3: navigation data
Layer 3a: how often do you go where?
Layer 3b: who do you meet. how often?
Layer 3c: how long do you stay?
Layer 3d : what else happens in the area while you are there?
Layer 3e: who else is in the area, however tangential? How many times have you been near that person?
Layer 4: what music do you listen to?
Layer 4a: how often do you repeat this music?
Layer 4b: who do you share your music with?
Layer 4c: what purchases do you make while listening to what music, and where are you at those points?
These are just the first 4 layers available to them during the normal course of your day. By the time you get to the bottom of that short list, they know an immense amount about you. The behavioral modifiers I've listed produce an alarming amount of data on you, far more serious than "he bought this brand of toilet paper on the way home from this movie".
Google has done an alarming amount of activity tracking. Their Android phones will track you in Airplane mode with the SIM card pulled and the phone turned off. Proven story. Their response to getting caught is usually "That never happened. Ok, it happened but you misunderstood what was going on. Ok thats exactly what was going on but it was a simple mistake, a debug feature that should have been turned off. it'll never happen again." But it does, usually before the reporting on the current privacy breach is completed.
Apple now seems to have the beginnings of an equally nasty system happening. Back to my original point, look at my layer model explanation of Google's bad actions. Then use that same mode of thinking to see what mal use Apple's new tools could be put to.
BTW: don't forget Apple has now enabled MacOS to always phone home and report on what apps you're using, and when, and how often, and you get the picture. And anyone who produces a VPN for MacOS must use the new VPN framework that conveniently tunnels Apple home calls right through the VPN layer. Still think they're benevolent?
The Find My network has been going for a decade, doing exactly this. They don't "volunteer an individual's location", they securely report back the location of the thing you're looking for. And they certainly don't report it to "someone or some agency".
Apple's brand value is significantly increased because people trust it to keep your id and location and other data private. They have proven over the last decade at least that they do this. I very much doubt that Apple could ever make enough money from the data that they have in-house (even if they could decode it usefully) to compensate them for the catastrophic loss of trust capital that would result.
The reason AirTags are likely to be successful and safe is that they are from Apple, rather than from a company who's track record is either bad or at best unknown.
Not even just an iPhone as Android devices will also pick them up once in lost mode.
No. Nevertheless I got 4 of them today, as I do find it a very interesting addition to "my" ecosystem. I want to try, what it could be good for as object tracker. I can think about or I just can try it, use it, or give it up...
Ok, somewhat different story: I got the very first iPad 1.0 just out of curiousity. I had no real clue, what I should do with that brick. It was nice, but initially not really useful. Today the question reverted a bit: What would I do without that iPad, looking at all the things, I am doing with the iPad.
Good to know that! Still waiting for the Belkin holders although they were supposed to come before the Airtags that are already here.
I haven’t lost one yet but I’m thinking about hiding one in an item as bait to be stolen purposefully. We have had people coming to our neighborhood in the early AM opening unlocked car doors. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing one and an unwanted electronic to leave in my otherwise empty unlocked car to catch them.