This is such a product in search of a problem that barely exists. Most of the AirTag press has been nothing but negative in recent months.
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New York Attorney General Issues AirTag Consumer Alert Over Stalking Concerns
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That genie was out of the bottle long before AirTags.
See https://www.amazon.com/b?node=617650011&ref=sr_nr_n_3
Apple just happened to be the one to start notifying people about it.
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As they should be of their “items”. Therefore negating the need for this product to exist. The flip side is that the masses have given up their right to privacy A LONG TIME AGO. No one reads the fine print on anything. It’s damn near impossible fo the average person to NOT be tracked without very specific steps, software and such to avoid it. Even so A cell phone pings towers regularly sooooo yeah. It’s how we find terrorists etc.
It's because Tile don't work like Apple's works. I have Tile right now, and if I left it at a restaurant I can't track if it's moved from State to State like I can my AirTag. There is no comparison between Apple and Tile.
GPS + cellular trackers work everywhere too.
See https://www.amazon.com/b?node=617650011&ref=sr_nr_n_3
Also see https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/technology/airtags-gps-surveillance.html
So you want your airtags to allow you to track down and find someone without them being alerted that they're being tracked?
Hmm... sounds kinda familiar?
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The only REAL way is to completely go off the grid. Dump the cell phone. Even with the most strict security for personal use, the thing still has to ping a tower regularly. It’s just not realistically possible for average people to avoid being tracked and its baked into every app and every website. And tons of websites bug the hell out of you if you have blockers installed. Soooo yeah.
I have yet to meet, encounter or personally know anyone that uses any of these self proclaimed “trackers” ,aside from the biggest tracker we all have in our pockets.
Those third party GPS products don't perform the same way apple's airtag performs. Those third party GPS products do not dynamically alert the tracked person if their iPhone is being broadcasted their location. If women/men leaving clubs, restaurants, offices, malls, etc for example were not being alerted 4 hours that someone is tracking them, then airtag would function no differently than those third GPS products you shared.
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FWIW, nearly 27,000 ratings for just this one product on Amazon.
NYT article references a company selling ~15,000 GPS+cellular trackers per month.
Someone's buying and using these things.
I didn't expect this, but I'm actually starting to wonder if Apple didn't fully consider how this product could be misused. I guess they could always pull the plug via a software update if things got out of hand.
Just consider this: if the person being stalked doesn't have a smartphone, what then?
Just consider this: if the person being stalked doesn't have a smartphone, what then?
Bingo.
There are many devices on the market able to accurately track a persons location that never provide any sort of alert or notification.
The "people getting tracked without their knowledge" genie has been out of the bottle a long time.
You claim since you haven't met someone who has then this isn't something that's happening?
From day one AirTags would sound a tone and alert nearby iphones if it had been travelling with them (and away from their owner) for a certain period of time.
That suggests Apple did think about it and sought a way to address the matter.
Since then they've made enhancements and appear to be interested in continuing to do so.
Do a little research before you reply please.
I find it really hard to believe that this is a legitimate issue given the safety mechanisms and no shortage of superior alternatives for stalkers. :/
Is this actually happening or is it just a clickbait topic used by tech youtubers to get views?
Is this actually happening or is it just a clickbait topic used by tech youtubers to get views?
Except they don’t care about that, they just care about the publicity they will get from the announcement.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Not exactly. If my car or bike is stolen, I'd like to be able to help the police go right to wherever they are now... instead of only giving me a piece of paper to file with the insurance company and then soon getting to enjoy chipping in the shortfall of cash not (fully) covered by insurance AND pay higher premiums forever for making a claim.
These may not be able to accomplish this in that scenario, but for their price, it seemed better than nothing.
Maybe deflecting from the skyrocketing crime rate?
Letitia James is only concerned insofar as it could add a little boost to Letitia James. They could arrest and book every single perpetrator of the offense described and her office would advise against prosecution.
I totally agree with you; there is so much stuff that doesn’t even give a person alert. Talking about making the money count for something waste time if you are only looking at one manufacturer- and the dozens of ‘spy shops’ that distribute out of NY state. Laughable.
Or you know she could actually do something about the rising crime rates in her city, but all she does is pass the blame. -New York Attorney General Letitia James
Trust me, I *get* the reason why you'd want to be able to lead the police to where your bike is without the thief ever knowing.
Trouble is the feature set for a device allowing you to do that - small, difficult to notice, silent, does not alert anyone to its presence - also happens to make for an ideal device for the ill-intentioned in stalking their prey.
You want to track your bike without the thief knowing you're tracking it. Person with bad intentions wants to track the purse or coat of a woman in a bar/store/hotel without her knowing he's tracking it. Essentially the same use case even though the intentions are completely different.
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Apple made a HUGE privacy mistake with the invention of their Airtag. The privacy mistake is we can't opt out of being tracked by someone else's AirTag. That's the keyword there.
Each time someone gets a new iPhone, they are asked a series of questions at setup like this:
Do you want to share your analytics with third party? Yes/No.
Do you want to use siri for hands free voice commands? Yes/ No.
What Apple didn't ask is...
Would you like to help the Apple community find their lost items? Yes/No.
Apple does not prompt users with this missing question and therefore now all our devices are accessible beacons to anyone for maliciousness or for good.
However, Apple Airtag would not be successful as it is today to track lost items if people were asked this question. So Apple is putting the responsibility on their faithful iPhone owners to check their pockets, purses, hairnets, bags, cars, etc for these $20 plastic objects. Apple is developing all these tools to make ME responsible not to be tracked when we only want to track our own items. Why would anyone agree to help strangers find their items? Agreeing to help OTHERS find their items requires your location to be broadcasted to them, which is a security exploit unknown to the owner of their iPhone. What's worse is iPhone owners can't even opt out of this AirTag tracking service even if they don't even own an AirTag, which is at the core of the issue, because everyone is already opted in by owning a mobile Apple device and not informed they're in the tracking location service.
Tech companies use your data against you/to benefit you all the time. They may not use this data against you maliciously, but at some point the device asked you a message about providing you with a "better experience" and you accepted not knowing what that actually means. So, now you'll get clever pop-up message that says "it'll take you 45 minutes to get home from this location", and on route to your home that same "better experience" you opted in for will now alert you to use the on screen coupon for the restaurant to your right of you while waiting at the a traffic light.
Apple should require users to accept or decline if they want to help track items that does not belong to you as the iPhone owner.
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"Tracking people without their awareness or consent is a serious felony and will not be tolerated by my office unless I agree with who is doing it." -fixed that for Letitia
Simple takeaway is that even thought GPS and other forms of tracking are not new, Apple did make their whole "interconnected" ecosystem available for this on an unprecedented level, and made these trackers household item over night at the same time.
So there's no point arguing about "but it was possible before" - not like that. And it doesn't matter either how beneficial and groundbreaking the system is for regular users when it's so easy misused in various levels of criminality or even just "basic abuse", "light stalking" etc - not those things that get escalated or even get uncovered (on time/ever). And given how it works there's also no simple solution to prevent immediate misuse in any way basically, that's the nature how it's set up.
Apple is not a victim nor perpetrator in a classic sense either here, more of a vessel of unfortunate privacy nightmare situations and even though I admire the technology, I just don't see a simple way out of this than shutting it down or coming with some stricter and lower functioning version that will not be as attractive to customers of course.
And we all should prefer to "air on the side of caution" I think regardless how fond we are of a favorite corporation entity
So there's no point arguing about "but it was possible before" - not like that. And it doesn't matter either how beneficial and groundbreaking the system is for regular users when it's so easy misused in various levels of criminality or even just "basic abuse", "light stalking" etc - not those things that get escalated or even get uncovered (on time/ever). And given how it works there's also no simple solution to prevent immediate misuse in any way basically, that's the nature how it's set up.
Apple is not a victim nor perpetrator in a classic sense either here, more of a vessel of unfortunate privacy nightmare situations and even though I admire the technology, I just don't see a simple way out of this than shutting it down or coming with some stricter and lower functioning version that will not be as attractive to customers of course.
And we all should prefer to "air on the side of caution" I think regardless how fond we are of a favorite corporation entity