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iOS 14.5 Beta 3 Includes 'Item Safety Feature' for AirTags and Other Tracked Items to Help Prevent Stalking

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iOS and iPadOS 14.5 beta 3 includes a new "Item Safety Feature" that helps prevent someone from stalking or tracking you with item trackers such as AirTags.

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The new toggle was higlighted by 9to5Mac contributor and developer Benjamin Mayo, who explains that with the feature toggled on, your iPhone will notice that someone has placed an AirTag or other Find My-compatible item tracker in your possession and prevent your location from being shared. If you attempt to turn the toggle off, the Find My app warns you that by doing so, "the owner of an unknown item will be able to see your location."

The prompt states that with the toggle off, your iPhone will no longer send you notifications if an unknown item is found moving with you. iOS 14.5 beta 3, released this week, includes a new Items tab within the Find My app, which is primarily expected to be the home of Apple's upcoming AirTags item tracker.

MacRumors contributor Steve Moser last year discovered code within iOS 14.3 beta 1 that states, "If you feel your safety is at risk due to this item, contact your local law enforcement. You may need the serial number of this item." Additionally, iOS code says that users should learn how to disable an item, which in AirTags' case may involve removing the battery, in order to stop it from transmitting your location.

AirTags have been rumored to be launching for months now, and the most recent hope is that a launch will take place during a virtual event this month. Initial speculation pointed to an event taking place on March 16, but Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that an event on March 16 won't happen.

A date for the potential event is unknown, but March 23 and March 30 appear to be reasonable guesses based on Apple's preference for Tuesday events and Apple's comments that its App Tracking Transparency requirement that's being finalized in iOS 14.5 will launch in "early spring."

Article Link: iOS 14.5 Beta 3 Includes 'Item Safety Feature' for AirTags and Other Tracked Items to Help Prevent Stalking
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/04/ios-14-5-item-safety-feature/
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ececlv said:
thats real cool. Unfortunately that means if you put a tracker on your own backpack/car etc when someone steals it, it will warn them that they are being tracked.
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Damn that would be bad. Hope they have a solution for this. A kidnapper or car thief with an iPhone can disable it if I’m reading correctly.

then I thought, well if it’s my own that I’m using to track my car maybe it won’t, but then realized that stalkers would have their own tag to stalk someone so they would have the same disable or continue option. Super curious how they solve this.
 
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This is exactly what I suggested the code should look like! If your phone detects that a tracking item is near you but not owned by you, then it will alert you. Obviously I know that the engineers at Apple are smart and probably already thought of this but I’d like to think it was me, a small and insignificant macrumors forums postee 😂
 
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I get the safety concerns, and can’t disagree with them. But the appeal to me of AirTags would have been that I could use them to track my stuff, particularly if something got stolen. But it sounds like the original rumored functionality isn’t going to happen. If someone steals something, (and they don’t explicitly disable the default safety features), then the item’s location will not be reported. So, the item tracker will *not* be useful as an item tracker unless you yourself are in range of the item.
 
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It sounds like it is not going to disable the tracker, but just disabling notification for it.

So if you are carrying someone elses tracker on you. You will get a notification saying that "another airtag appear to be carry by you". And you can turn this notification off
 
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LeadingHeat said:
This is exactly what I suggested the code should look like! If your phone detects that a tracking item is near you but not owned by you, then it will alert you. Obviously I know that the engineers at Apple are smart and probably already thought of this but I’d like to think it was me, a small and insignificant macrumors forums postee 😂
Click to expand...

I thought about this before too. But I wonder what the threshold is before this safety feature gets triggered. Say, I hop onto a local bus from one side of town to another. Wouldn't I get bunch of alerts saying I'm being tracked?
 
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albert421 said:
It sounds like it is not going to disable the tracker, but just disabling notification for it.

So if you are carrying someone elses tracker on you. You will get a notification saying that "another airtag appear to be carry by you". And you can turn this notification off
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Oh, yeah. So it’s not turning the tracker off. It’s giving you a notification so you can find the tracker and call the police.
 
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ececlv said:
thats real cool. Unfortunately that means if you put a tracker on your own backpack/car etc when someone steals it, it will warn them that they are being tracked.
Click to expand...

No it doesn’t mean that at all. The tile has to be somewhere on your body and close to your phone, and not just in a car you're riding in. Obviously alerting every person riding in a car (or bus, train, or airplane) that there's a tracker in it makes zero sense since it's not unusual for people to ride in public transportation.
 
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avonord said:
I thought about this before too. But I wonder what the threshold is before this safety feature gets triggered. Say, I hop onto a local bus from one side of town to another. Wouldn't I get bunch of alerts saying I'm being tracked?
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No. The people that posted this have no common sense.
 
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I'm interested that one needs to own an iPhone to be notified that they might potentially be tracked by an airtag. While it's understandable it only works with apple products, it's still makes you think if companies are trying to own the guns and bandages.

Not sure if this might happen, but probably should have used an open standard that most platforms can work with. Convenience devices shouldn't be this big of a privacy risk for non owners of a company's products.
 
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avonord said:
I thought about this before too. But I wonder what the threshold is before this safety feature gets triggered. Say, I hop onto a local bus from one side of town to another. Wouldn't I get bunch of alerts saying I'm being tracked?
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Yeah I would think with the U1 chip being utilized with AirTags or other items that it would know the proximity. A few feet vs in your backpack/purse next to your phone.

But yeah also a time trigger as well, I would say next to you for at least 3-4 hours maybe? Or it could maybe know if that owner is in your contacts and mark it as safe? Not sure. Remains to be seen for sure!
 
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somnolentsurfer said:
Presumably it’s going to have some kind of time delay before it activates? It’s not going to disable every time you sit next to someone on the bus?
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I bet the alert will go if if your iphone is reporting the tracker. Assumably, on the bus, the trackers owner’s phone will be the only one connected to the tracker
 
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Good move, because I have Apple One with 4 family members, and noticed we could all track each other's devices in Find My.
I couldn't find a way to disable this!?
 
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