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What to Know if You Plan to Travel Abroad With AirTags
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I generally don’t either, but my daughter’s backpack and my wife’s keys are another story. And I’m usually always the one that has to find them.
Once it’s ‘with you’ it shouldn’t appear on any else’s devices.
One factor is certainly how often one uses public transport. I've used public transport probably six days a week for most of my adult live. The most frequently forgotten object was probably an umbrella (which one also easily forgets at restaurants, stores etc.). When travelling by train on leisure trips with multiple items of luggage, forgetting an extra plastic bag with food in it has happened multiple times. I've also forgotten hats in the overhead luggage compartment in trains more often than I would like to admit.
I sure hope so. These things need to support the scenario where items purposefully, temporarily leave your possession.
Regarding the beeping after three days. These things don't just start beeping after a 3 day period. To prevent unwanted tracking of a person or vehicle, they make themselves known pretty quickly if you start to track them. Else the unwanted tracking prevention – especially of someone without an iPhone that can detect someone else's AirTag – doesn't really work if you can track their movements for a whopping 3 days before they make noise. I'm trying to resolve in my mind how this unwanted tracking prevention behavior allows the checked bag scenario to also work.
I understand, but is attaching tags to everything you may possibly carry with you really the answer? Carry extra tags just in case, like for a bag of food? Manage when each one should or should not be “active” (assuming you can be notified if you stray away from them or something like that) so you don‘t get bothered when you decide to leave home without your tagged umbrella?
I honestly think making an effort to apply some repeatable, routine behaviors during transitions (arriving at home, leaving home, entering/leaving a vehicle, entering/leaving an establishment, etc.) would remove most of the need for these devices for the majority of people. When leaving home I always ask myself “do I have everything I need (wallet, keys, paperwork if I need it for an appointment, etc.)”. In other transitions I ask myself “do I have everything I had when I entered”?
I‘m not a medical professional, but I think there may be other benefits to trying to do it on our own. I know I don’t remember phone numbers like I used to. The reason is “well, they are all in my iPhone anyway.” I worry that the more we allow these devices to provide what I can only refer to as “mental crutches”, the heavier the price we will pay down the road as we approach the inevitable age-related cognitive decline.
Point of clarification - we drive on the right side.You can't talk too much when you're still driving in the wrong side of the road
But not the right hand side.
My argument was multi-pronged:
a) People do lose stuff all the time, even if a lot of it is low value (umbrellas, gloves, hats, plastic bags)
b) Some of those items actually have a somewhat significant value (I have hats, gloves, Swiss army knifes that cost close to $100)
c) Within that group, some items are suitable for attaching trackers like AirTags (I have Tiles on a couple of my hats and I have quite a number of times spent considerable amount of time retracing my steps to find stuff I had lost, also there is no ‘managing’ needed, attach the tracker, label it in the app with the name of the item and you are set until it is time to change the battery)
I am just triggered by generalisations like ‘I have never lost something in 30 years’ because I think a lot of times they aren’t actually true and even if, they aren’t true for most people.
And yes, routines help which is exactly the reason why you lose stuff when you break routine, eg, when travelling. Routines also don’t help too much with stuff falling out of your pockets. Have you never had something slide out of your pants pocket while sitting down, or a glove falling out of your jacket pocket while walking?
And finally, maybe that’s just the inverse of Murphy’s law, but I haven’t lost a single hat since I attached Tiles to them (and I don’t mean recovered thanks to Tile, they haven’t gone missing in the first place). And should features like Find My iPhone not exist because they make us less careful?
But I can’t reset your iPhone if I steal it from you, that was my point.
if Airtags have IAL too, then they are a pointless theft.
Unless you have a personal valet carrying your luggage for extended periods of time, the anti-stalking feature won't kick in. These this the decision tree for an AirTag:
________ Moving with you more or less?
_______ yes _______ _______ _____ no
_______ / _______ ________ _______ \
____ no alarm _______ _______ __ stationary?
_______ _______ _______ _____ yes_______ no
_______ _______ _______ _____ / _________ \
_______ _______ _______ __no alarm_____ follows other iPhone closely for > x hours?
_______ _______ _______ _______ _____ yes _______ _______ ________ _______ no
_______ _______ _______ _______ _____ /_______ _______ ________ _______ ____\
_______ _______ _______ _______ stalking alarm_______ ________ ____ separated from you for >3 days
_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ ________ _______ yes_______ _______ _______ no
_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ ________ _______ /_______ _______ _______ ___\
_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ ________ ____ beeping _______ ____________ no alarm
One can inverse the last two questions with the same end result. In the checked baggage scenario the third question simply will be answered with a No as no single baggage handler will be close enough for long enough. We don’t know (yet) what exactly the x in ‘x hours’ is. But it is definitely much shorter than 72 but likely at least 1. And this can be a multiple criteria decision, eg, if following very closely for more than 30 min (eg, phone and tracker directly on the person or in the same bag) or if following more loosely for more than 2 h.
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See this article:
"AirTags also have a unique security feature called Pairing Lock, which protects against people who may find your lost item and snatch the AirTag from it to use as their own. Huang likens Pairing Lock to the iPhone’s Activation Lock. “It means that if you lose your AirTag, somebody can’t just pick up your AirTag, re-pair it with their phone, and continue using it,” he says."
But why? It becomes useless as soon as it’s locked to the first Apple ID?
Yes, this is the point I have been making-a stolen AirTag is useless to the thief.
All fair points, and I would never argue the feature should not exist. I do have the concerns I stated about it, though.
As you point out, the value of the item that may be lost has a lot to do with how useful this feature is to an individual. I could maybe see attaching a $25-$30 tag to a $100 hat, but attaching $50-$60 worth of tags to a $100 pair of gloves doesn‘t seem worthwhile to me. The economics of it when I think about the odds of losing the item don’t add up for me. But, at the end of the day we each decide what is worthwhile for us. If this tech works for you, by all means, enjoy!
Wonder if Airlines require the ultra-wide band to be turned of for security reasons? Thinking about the radiowaves send out of 50 Airtags tagged to a plane 30000 ft in the air...
There is some value with an airtag in the airline situation. Being able to say to the agent “I lost my bag, my airtag shows it in Chicago, can you help?” Rather than “I lost my bag, it never arrived on the luggage belt, can you help?” should be useful. (If the luggage tag was with an airline that scans the baggage tags, hopefully they already have that info, but when I worked for the airline (over 15 years ago, to be fair) all the luggage wasn’t always scanned.
I bet the drivers fo those luggage carts will get lots of notifications on their phones that airbags are present lol.
I had a set of aluminum rimoya for a few years and locked my iPhone inside the carryon after a hardcore week in Hong Kong - Find My iPhone didn’t work - didn’t see it. Gave up and caught my flight home. Found the iPhone (still powered up) in my jeans pocket later when unpacking. Curiously HK airport security didn’t say anything when they scanned my carryon. That doesn’t definitely mean the tag won’t work however because Ultra Wideband is a different system but I doubt it will because the aluminum rimoya completely encases it in metal. Maybe you should try and see if later version Bluetooth headphones will remain connected if you put the iPhone in the closed suitcase?
Gave the rimoya set to the daughter and family - got tired of constantly getting them fixed, not to mention getting searched by thieving TS-A screeners every time I went through the airports back in America.
That’s a very interesting point. With all of their emphasis on privacy and security you could construe that this is a breach of someone’s trust if it’s not clearly pointed out to them when they get an Apple device. And shouldn’t users be compensated for the packet usage? At minimum there should be notification and an opt out mechanism from this de facto network.