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Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

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Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#51

Post by gojomo »

After I saw third-party "10 year battery enclosure" offerings for AirTags, was wondering when other workaround customizations like this might appear.

Other impactful variants might be:

* senses whether another 'sibling' AirTag is present, if so, stays off. If not, waits X hours & then turns on.

* has its own motion sensor; only after X minutes of being stationary, it waits Y hours to turn on briefly

* has its own clock & (original-user-known) randomization seed; turns on at pseudorandom intervals the original user can predict

* low-power/low-bandwidth receivers so cheap & tiny now: could wait for national or even global unit-specific 'wake' request - perhaps even with parameters for duration/intervals – before powering-on AirTag portion

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#53

Post by Gibbon1 »

A while ago saw someone who was working in the tracking space said the following.

For stolen items you don't want to track them. You want to be able to ask them where they are. The advantage is you can make a locator that doesn't reveal itself by transmitting. And it doesn't waste power receiving gps signals. You could literally have a device that runs for years on a AA battery.

The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#54

Post by mulmen »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #42
mulmen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have your priorities wrong. Why should an unsustainable business be prioritized over consumer benefit? Nobody has a right to a successful business but when consumers can trust their purchases they are more likely to make additional purchases.

The lack of trust in the purchase comes from Apple, not from this seller. It's apple that's reaching into your device and force updating the firmware without your consent.

No. The product in this case relies on unintended functionality in a specific firmware version of an Apple device that is specifically designed to not be suitable for this application. In this case it is the add-on device that is not offering refunds if it stops working.

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#55

Post by Gys »

> Events outside our control, such as Apple updating the firmware in the future to prevent the device from working

There are several much cheaper nock offs that inherently will never update the firmware. Why not support those? And just to be sure, offer a package deal, include such tracker.

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#56

Post by pompidoo »

mulmen wrote: post #28
dudeinjapan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable solution would be to get to buy the newer model half-off if this happens. Obviously the maker can’t just have his entire biz nuked with refunds if Apple happens to update firmware.

I think you have your priorities wrong. Why should an unsustainable business be prioritized over consumer benefit? Nobody has a right to a successful business but when consumers can trust their purchases they are more likely to make additional purchases.

I felt like adding that disclaimer was a nice thing to do, informing the customer and letting them make their own decision. It makes almost no difference to remove that disclaimer (well, it would increase sales). it is not to protect myself. The price is very low and margin is very thin, what happens if Apple bricks the device? There would be very little money left to refund the customers, and most of the refunds would be eaten by transaction fees. Is it worth it for the customers to receive a few cents back? And that's assuming I keep all the money in the company and don't pay myself.

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#57

Post by pompidoo »

andygeorge wrote: post #46
pompidoo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hardcoded, but I'm thinking of offering different time intervals in the future

> offering different time intervals your previous response to the stalking concerns was "it's 4 hours off / 1 hour on, the device is not very suitable for stalking someone"; wouldn't this comment - allowing that to change - then make it even easier for stalkers?

Well it would warn the person that they are being tracked when the airtag turns back on, so I feel like any other tracker would be better suited for stalking people, and most of the time it wouldn't even track.

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#58

Post by birdman3131 »

andygeorge wrote: post #43
pompidoo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point. In this case the price point makes this a bearable risk, especially to protect much more valuable items. A refund is only useful if only a certain % of people have issue or the company is big. Since this is my only product, an Airtag update that bricks the devices would just bankrupt the company and make me unable to refund most people as my margin is very low anyway.

sure but you've acknowledged that your product is something that Apple considers bad and could shut it down. that can usually be overlooked for things like emulation, but you've developed a product that does something Apple specifically added protections against after they learned of its dangerous misuse

That does not read as "something that Apple considers bad" but rather "something that Apple COULD consider bad"

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#59

Post by xmodem »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #53

A while ago saw someone who was working in the tracking space said the following. For stolen items you don't want to track them. You want to be able to ask them where they are. The advantage is you can make a locator that doesn't reveal itself by transmitting. And it doesn't waste power receiving gps signals. You could literally have a device that runs for years on a AA battery. The reason you don't see these on the…

> You want to be able to ask them where they are.

Through what presently-existing technology, exactly, is this idea supposed to work over distances greater than at best a couple of miles with say LoRA?

> The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.

I'm not equipped to analyse their claims in detail, but Apple claims the design of their find-my network is end-to-end encrypted, and presumably it would be a huge scandal if this turned out to be a massive lie.

Re: Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag

#60

Post by int_19h »

andygeorge wrote: post #48
atoav wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

yup. it unfortunately works well in the gun industry

FWIW the vast majority of guns sold to civilians never get discharged at anything other than pieces of paper.

(And quite a few never get used at all - "safe queen" is a well-established term for a reason.)

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