Muscle Car Owner Targeted With Hidden AirTag Placed by Thieves

[CarlJ]

So, isn't it the case that an AirTag is only useful if it's connected to an AppleID, so the the location alerts can get back to the AirTag's owner? Shouldn't there be some scenario where the police can contact Apple and say, "we found this here AirTag (presumably) surreptitiously attached to someone's car - please tell us who owns it" (where "please" may be in the form of a court order, signed off on by a judge). And then they visit the would-be thief (or crazed ex, or whoever) to ask some questions.

 

[CarlJ]

I continue to be confused about how AirTags enable anything that couldn't be accomplished by a thief driving down a residential street at night.

Better work scheduling for the thieves?

 

[themacdad]

Apple should implement some sort of method that allows authorities to find the owners of the AirTag. maybe that would help discourage the use of these. After all they are tied to an iCloud account which has to use an iOS device to setup which has the IMEI and serial number and the phone number of the device which can then be tracked by the authorities back to the perp.. just and idea unless this hasn't already been implemented.

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

If you find an AirTag, you put it in a place where you can catch the owners when they come to look for it. Tracking goes both ways.

 

[mozumder]

that had nothing to do with the discussion, and you still havent gone back to any of your comments to edit in a formal apology, fully acknowledge your wrongdoing in failing miserably to read an article you chose to irresponsibly comment on.

get it done.

I accept your apology.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

Just put the air tag with some pedo paraphernalia and call Chris Hansen.

 

[Moonlight]

It's a muscle car only to those that own them and want to think they're cool. The muscle car era ended years ago. These Chargers are heavy pigs that can't do much of anything right. Even a straight line is a challenge for most that own them.

You do not disappoint

 

[Kierkegaarden]

If you need an iPhone and iCloud account to activate an AirTag, why can’t this type of use for nefarious purposes be turned over to authorities?

 

[jimbobb24]

Actually, it's more like Mars saying “we sold you those M&Ms to eat, not to use as a defensive weapon.”

The difference between lost and stolen in a big city is less clear than that. But yes they are useless for theft prevention.

 

[Phil77354]

Wouldn't it be true that any AirTag that someone placed in your vehicle would also be traceable back to that person or device? It has to be associated with their account, doesn't it?

That should mean that a mechanism can be set up to make this work to the benefit of the police, at least in those cases where the AirTag is found (before the car gets nabbed).

edit: it looks like I'm not the only one to make this point. Hard to join the conversation after 150+ posts!

 

[cmaier]

Wouldn't it be true that any AirTag that someone placed in your vehicle would also be traceable back to that person or device? It has to be associated with their account, doesn't it?

That should mean that a mechanism can be set up to make this work to the benefit of the police, at least in those cases where the AirTag is found (before the car gets nabbed).

AirTag as a method of stalking or tracking to-be-stolen stuff is bad for that reason as well as a bunch of others. Only thing it has going for it is price.

 

[usagora]

Yes, I own it now. We have laws that protect customers to ensure they can sell things they purchased without needing to get the original sellers permission. Licensing attempts to circumvent this and can’t possibly hold up in court.

No, sorry, you don't "own" pirated copies of software. You illegally possess them.

My point is that I don’t think it’s ever been tested. If you tie software to hardware I purchased you lose your rights to claim you licensed the software when clearly it was bundled as part of the sale of the hardware.

So this whole time you've been thinking about operating systems specifically? You've now totally lost me. You can easily sell both Windows and macOS machines with their respective operating systems installed and that's perfectly legal. I'm talking about application software, such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, etc. If you have a physical disk with a license key, then you can sell that without issue because the license key is tied to the disc. However, with software downloaded online, the license is tied to your account, and whether that license can be transferred depends on the license agreement that YOU agree to by purchasing and downloading the software. Again, feel free to cite current US law that you think a software company would be in violation of by prohibiting the transfer of a license.

 

[Rigby]

Apple obviously knows the contact and location info of owners using these tags for nefarious purposes. I wonder how hard it is for police to get this information from Apple when presented with a search warrant.

Criminals would probably use an Apple ID account created with a fake name.

 

[vipergts2207]

It's a muscle car only to those that own them and want to think they're cool. The muscle car era ended years ago. These Chargers are heavy pigs that can't do much of anything right. Even a straight line is a challenge for most that own them.

...

 

[Rigby]

You've been able to buy cheap GPS trackers online for years. And the same can be done with the Tile for years.

Not really, because Tile didn't have a vast tracking network consisting of tens or hundreds of millions of devices that are almost everywhere. Only the few phones that had the tile app installed could report a tag's location. And GPS trackers are a lot more expensive, bigger, need a cellular plan and line of sight to the sky, and the battery lasts at most a few days.

 

[usagora]

I want to track my property but they won’t let me track my children or pets. Children and pets are type of property.

Children are a type of property? Yikes. And what do you mean they won't let you track your pet? What's stopping you from doing so? You can even buy pet collars made to use with an AirTag. If by tracking your children you mean in a surveillance-type way, that is clearly not their intended use.

 

[BootsWalking]

Criminals would probably use an Apple ID account created with a fake name.

True, but Apple would still have their location.

 

[markusfarkus]

There is a lot of info on twitter casting doubt on all of this. Apparently, when one tries to find an actual case where an actual car was actually stolen due to an airtag, no such cases turn up, and the canadian report was some sort of speculation.

How would anyone know if the car was stolen due to an airtag?

 

[StandingGoose]

Apple needs to give iPhone owners the ability to disallow their phones to pass other people's AirTag data back to apple for tracking. Notifications are not enough. I do not want my phone being used to give location data to another person's airTag.

Settings / Privacy / Location Services / Share My Location / Find My iPhone / Find My Network

 

[cmaier]

How would anyone know if the car was stolen due to an airtag?

Well, they’d have to do an investigation, right? So claiming that “cars are being stolen because of airtags” but not explaining how they know that is exactly the problem with this reporting. Unless they caught people, or subpoenaed apple for info on airtags and correlated them to stolen cars, etc., this is nothing more than paranoid speculation.

 

[840quadra]

Overall this product sounds more and more like something I just want to avoid full stop. Talking as a consumer or an innocent party being tracked.

 

[cmaier]

Overall this product sounds more and more like something I just want to avoid full stop. Talking as a consumer or an innocent party being tracked.

Why? Nobody has actually been tracked. There is zero evidence any cars were stolen because of airtags. There is only speculation. It works great for its intended purpose. And it has lots of built-in safeguards to prevent it from being used to track you, unlike, say, the cheap android phone, GPS-tracker devices, Tiles, etc. that people can already use. Or is this just the general anti-Apple bias that permeates here?

 

[oceptis]

No one is saying anyone is lying. But he can’t know why the tracker was put on his car. He’s guessing.

I agree. Who would take the chance of loosing an AirTag to steal a Dodge Charger? That’s a pretty low ROI.

 

[LeadingHeat]

I continue to be confused about how AirTags enable anything that couldn't be accomplished by a thief driving down a residential street at night.

My thoughts exactly. The fact that these rumor sites are publishing articles like this is only shedding bad light on the AirTags. When in fact they’re the first of their kind to alert someone of it following them. Before these, nobody knew they had a tile or other gps tracker on them.

The only benefit to these I guess is that it’s the opportunistic thievery. “Oh, dang that’s a super nice corvette. Let’s throw my AirTag on it to go steal it later” sort of thing.

 

[cmaier]

I agree. Who would take the chance of loosing an AirTag to steal a Dodge Charger? That’s a pretty low ROI.

I mean, people need to use their critical thinking skills. Someone got into the trunk and installed this thing? Didn’t do any damage to get in? Was willing to take the chance of being seen doing that?

If it’s real, isn’t it much more likely that it was placed there by the car dealer in order to aid in future potential repo? Or that someone he knows and who has access to the car did it?