If a thief gets the message that he is being tracked, he can just look for the Tag an throw it away - without disabling it.
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How to Disable an Unknown AirTag Found Moving With You to Prevent Being Tracked
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So you prefer leaving evidence (your AirTags) behind than discreetly follow your subject from afar? Getting caught? What a chance of it if you keep your distance from your subject? Almost none. Having evidence in her purse? Almost 100%.
Good point. I assume those dots are detection points, which gives an idea on how often it checks.
what this does tell us (assuming it is reflective of real world setup) is that alerts start within the hour. As you say, they may have started before this point.
I think most women would tell you that there is no shortage of men who already get uncomfortably close to them in bars... Heck, I’m a man and I’ve had guys get uncomfortably close to me in very creepy ways in clubs before... I don’t think “risking themselves by getting close” to someone they’d like to track is gonna be much of a deterrent for those men when they already do it and when it is, sadly, somewhat of a common behavior.
Just because it can be easy without AirTag, Apple should potentially let people use AirTag to do it?
I think your understanding of “disable” is not correct. Let me illustrate using your scenario.
A - owner of airtag
B - person on train
C- person on train
D - other person who you met after you disembarked from the train
Assuming you power off your phone, the airtag will assume it is not with the owner (A).
After a period of time, both B and C will receive notification that an unknown airtag is tracking them. When they click disable, they are simply disabling the link to their iPhones. It does not mean they can disable the airtag entirely, as they are not the user.
When you disembark and walk past D, the airtag will then hitch onto D’s iPhone. Meaning that you will know that your airtag last known location then, which will be the place you crossed path with D
So they do.
the timings are fairly consistent with the journey though I believe (not been to SF for a while).
I think the main point is that this would be an odd picture to have if in fact it took hours or days to send the alert.
If the AirTag is not close to the owner and is moving it will start beeping. So not for pets.
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The Apple website says that this won’t happen. The device needs to have been separated from its owner for this mode to kick in.
I’m not sure that is how it works.
If the tag is being used to track someone then in your scenario then walking past someone with a phone would give away their location, and even worse at this point they think they have solved the problem.
I would have thought that disabling means totally disabling.
How much movement? A dog moving within the confines of a house or yard while you are at work, or the dog just moving his head?
If a dog is far enough from its owner to be considered lost then why would this be an issue...? It would just alert people nearby that the dog is lost.
EDIT: Does it actually only play sounds if it is with a person with an iPhone?
So another question arises: Can an AirTag notice that it is travelling away from its owner only if another device picks up on it...? Or will it engage beep mode simply if it's away from you?
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Mute the the notifications to you, and disable tracking to you! Because you are not the owner.
It will stop irritating the hell out of you, and also address your privacy concerns.
Apple would be crazy to allow strangers to disable tracking.
Apple really ought to have put out a comprehensive FAQ for these things.
Yes. You are being tracked and you are disabling the sharing of your location by your iPhone.
Nothing about you disabling the sharing of others’ locations (even if they are near to you).
I assume that if your airtag has been disabled then you would be able to re-enable it at a later point.
The concern is that you are tracking someone when you are not there. Your presence removes that risk so I assume you will be able to reset.
The concern is that you are tracking someone when you are not there. Your presence removes that risk so I assume you will be able to reset.
The behaviour might be a bit different if you put them in lost mode. Movement patterns probably are also different between iTags in stolen items and those trying to track others, eg, thieves might deposit stolen items at their home instead of carry them around with them for more then a couple of hours.
...or just buy a simple GPS tracker which will give them much better anonymous tracking capability with non of these 'safety' features for them to worry about.
I don't see what difference that makes - any thief who knows it's there is just going to remove and ditch/destroy the AirTag, they're not going to waste any time trying to take the battery out of it.
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