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Apple Introduces AirTag

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Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#871

Post by warmwaffles »

pmastela wrote: post #499
SilverRed wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is having most items with built in tags. So yeah, your iphone tells you the bike you stole is tracking you but its not realistic to remove the tracker from it so you have to dump the bike.

The future is here [1]: > Available from today (April 7, 2021), the latest VanMoof S3 & X3 bikes will work with Apple’s Find My app, which means you can track your ride securely using the vast and global Find My network, made up of hundreds of millions of Apple devices. With the new Items tab in the Find My app, you can locate your bike on a map from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. 1: https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/find-…

Sounds like a strong degauss tool would render that useless.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#872

Post by xondono »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #683
xondono wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want it enough to pay 20% to 30% more and have the phone be ~5mm thicker? Because the obvious issue is that most people won’t.

Why is that the requirement? The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter.

“ The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter.”

“It’s two lines of code, how hard can it be?”

More seriously, the cost of designing a battery pack goes way beyond that, just like in software there’s a world of difference between an internal and an external interface. Adding ESD protection for instance can be a headache.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#873

Post by psychometry »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #704
psychometry wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you like to hear the lecture about why cats should be kept indoors now? Or have you already heard and ignored it many times?

Would you like to hear the reasons to let cats outside, or have you already heard and ignored them many times?

I'd actually like to hear one good reason, sure.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#874

Post by Dylan16807 »

shuckles wrote: post #870
Dylan16807 wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you imagine a professional thief stealing a jacket ?

I can’t think of many thieves trying to steal jackets, but that was the OP’s hypothetical, not mine.

OP's hypothetical was a thief stealing a jacket. But I would expect that to not be professional territory. You added professional.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#875

Post by wizzwizz4 »

r00fus wrote: post #351
llbeansandrice wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple successfully changed that I feel like this gives far too much credit to Apple. Any one company can "think differently" but Apple shouldn't get the blame for all of the other companies following suit. Remember the ads Samsung ran before axing the headphone jack a year later?

> Apple shouldn't get the blame for all of the other companies following suit It's not about blame - Apple has repeatedly changed the landscape of computing for decades. Mac, modern laptops, iPhone. Downplay their influence if you will, but they have been the harbinger so often before...

Apple didn't actually invent the modern laptop; that's just Apple PR. The Xerox NoteTaker, Osbourne 1, Dulmont Magnum, Toshiba T1100 and Compaq SLT all get credit for the “first” in different ways – and all in the 80s, before Apple produced a single computer that could be called a “modern laptop”. (Except the NoteTaker, which was 70s.) I vote the Toshiba T1100 as the first modern laptop, btw.

Apple was the first to put a trackball in a laptop (though that laptop was, in the rest of its design, at least five years out of date – hardly modern), invented the laptop palm rest, and – much later – was the first to put an Ethernet port in.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#876

Post by wizzwizz4 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #829
bengale wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have you told me this, I now have an urge to go test this by licking a cartridge.

I don't have a cartridge. Please lick yours and report back.

They don't taste much worse than pills-for-adults – unless you dislike bitter things, I suppose. The goal is to stop very small children from eating them, not determined 6-year-olds.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#877

Post by wizzwizz4 »

tekknik wrote: post #852
calsy wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People might not even realise a toy or electronic device has a button battery in them. There are no warnings on packaging. Kids can swallow them without an immediate reaction like choking. An hour or 2 later the child becomes sick and the parent doesn't understand why. They don't know they swallowed a battery, they didn't even know it existed. Medical professionals just assume its a fever. You cant see the button unl…

It’s not about realizing if a toy has a battery or not, the choking hazard alone is enough. There’s also no electronic devices a child should swallow. Kids are swallowing these because parents like this aren’t thinking.

I see you do not have a child.

I hate the trite “oh, you'll know when you're a parent!” stuff as much as the next person, but… have you met a one-year-old? So curious, and so quick to eat new things: a bad combo if I've ever seen one.

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#879

Post by beckman466 »

shoto_io wrote: post #794
speg wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the odds your pet will be within range of an iOS device? Perhaps intermittently if in a busy urban environment, quickly heading to nil if in a more rural area.

Yeah I guess it’s time for dogs to have their own iPhones.

iDog?

Re: Apple Introduces AirTag

#880

Post by angry_octet »

BoorishBears wrote: post #847
angry_octet wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The limitation of any tracker is battery lifetime. The AirTag circumvents this by only using low power transmission and the network of all iPhones and iPads in the world, which then relay via their own wifi/4G. What is certain is that we'll see sophisticated modifications to AirTags that (1) disable the beep, (2) disable anti-stalking. Theoretically remote attestation and self-disabling anti-tamper could be used, but…

"Holy Grail of surveillance espionage"... maybe the holy grail alarmist statements. Why are firmware modifications for this "certain" first off? And what modifications allow this to work as designed without setting off anti-stalking? If you somehow change the ID it's reporting which afaik is a signed value anyways, how are you going to get access to it's location? If you don't disable anti-stalking then this is no be…

Nation state attacks are certain because of the massive payoff if they are successful. Were you asleep when the Snowdon NSA leaks happened? [1]

If you can change the ID you can cycle through a list of valid IDs. You can even use it for bit rate comms, ~16 bits an hour or something, which is enough to signal events like "number of iDevices in vicinity", or, if other hardware is used, step count/hour, which works even in GPS denied environments.

The beacon location reported by Find My is generated by the reporting phones' GPS/cellular/wifi location system.

Regular GPS trackers have no means to exfil their data. They don't work in GPS denied environments (poor inside buildings, underground, anywhere a $20 jammer is enabled). OCGs routinely use low power GPS jammers now. Using GPS or 3G requires much more energy, and 3G is easily detected by motivated groups.

So while it might not be great for stalking your partner/ex, it is very tempting for professionals.

[1] https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/nsa-ant-catalog/

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