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AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

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Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s protection even if you’re standing there naked (except for the AirTag, of course, that has been secretly duct-taped to your buttocks): if the paired phone isn’t around, the AirTag makes noise. I can confirm this because my spouse is currently out of town, and I’ve grabbed her RV keys a couple of times to put stuff in the RV. And every time I pick the keys up, the AirTag goes off. It eventually shuts up just s…

It is trivial to damage airtag to disable the dynamic. So a committed stalker will do it without difficulty.

At some point, a committed stalker has access to lots of other options for stalking that are easier than the AirTag game.

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why annoy people like this? My e-bike has Find My tracking built in to the firmware. As long as you don’t steal my bike you have no privacy concerns from me securing my bike. Even better I can track my bike down without involving the police, so the potential thief doesn’t even have to worry about being shot by some trigger happy cop.

Is “cop shoots bike thief” something you actually think is common enough to note? This implies a concerning reality departure.

The police department is recommending people store their documents in an always-visible pouch to avoid getting shot.

https://dps.mn.gov/divisions/ooc/news-releases/Pages/dps-par...

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airtags are the only devices (that I know of) that can leverage a worldwide network of iPhones to transmit their location rather than a power intensive LTE or GSM link. They also don't require any external antennae for location determination like those GPS trackers stalkers use. Those features make make AirTags more practical for any use, good or bad. They do rotate Bluetooth MAC addresses so only you and Apple can f…

A prominent group of Virtual YouTubers (whose talents use avatars and keep their real identities anonymous) recently needed to stop allowing fans to send gifts to talents, despite them always having been screened, because the gifts might contain AirTags that could ping the sender when they arrive ina talent’s home. It’s not that this wasn’t possible before, but it suddenly became easy for a would-be stalker to execut…

Why not just have all packages go through a central location first, like an office in the city or something, where someone can open them and pass on the gifts? This is already a thing for celebrities/people who get targeted by stalkers/attackers.

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is “cop shoots bike thief” something you actually think is common enough to note? This implies a concerning reality departure.

Depends on the colour of the skin of the bike thief, but cop shoots innocent driver seems fairly common

I recommend you take some time to really research how common that actually is. You might be surprised. The modern world has a way of making relatively small (yet disturbing) events seem like massive wide spread problems careening out of control. It's one of the reasons we are seeing hyper polarization of beliefs. Nobody actually does the research, they just read headlines, and it seems like the world is much worse than it really is.

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why annoy people like this? My e-bike has Find My tracking built in to the firmware. As long as you don’t steal my bike you have no privacy concerns from me securing my bike. Even better I can track my bike down without involving the police, so the potential thief doesn’t even have to worry about being shot by some trigger happy cop.

Is “cop shoots bike thief” something you actually think is common enough to note? This implies a concerning reality departure.

At least where I live it is. I’ve personally witnessed two instances of excessive force and been a victim of excessive force myself.

And the last police shooting was ultimately about stolen property. They killed a father to be and a fetus over a suspected stolen car.

So no, I haven’t departed reality. But yes, not all police departments are like this (mine specifically has been under federal oversight for years).

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the colour of the skin of the bike thief, but cop shoots innocent driver seems fairly common

I recommend you take some time to really research how common that actually is. You might be surprised. The modern world has a way of making relatively small (yet disturbing) events seem like massive wide spread problems careening out of control. It's one of the reasons we are seeing hyper polarization of beliefs. Nobody actually does the research, they just read headlines, and it seems like the world is much worse th…

US cops kill 15 times as many civilians as most civilised countries.

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend you take some time to really research how common that actually is. You might be surprised. The modern world has a way of making relatively small (yet disturbing) events seem like massive wide spread problems careening out of control. It's one of the reasons we are seeing hyper polarization of beliefs. Nobody actually does the research, they just read headlines, and it seems like the world is much worse th…

US cops kill 15 times as many civilians as most civilised countries.

> "fairly common"?

You are about as likely to get hit and killed by lightning as you are to die from being shot by police.

Chance of getting hit by lightning:

1 in 500,00 = 2.0 * 10^-6 [1]

Chance of getting shot and killed by police (2020):

993 in 331,449,281 = 2.99 x 10^-6 [2]

Hardly seems "fairly common" now does it? And, your second post about the relative frequency to other countries is a different statement, one that while interesting, doesn't say anything about how frequent something is.

And the numbers aren't even outside of an order of magnitude if focusing on African Americans while controlling for population.

241 in 44,780,000 = 5.38 x 10^-6 [3]

I understand that your sentiment is in vogue, but emotion and vitriol has taken enough of our society away from us. When possible, maintaining perspective is paramount.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183489/population-of-the....

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#78
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirTags, like all Apple devices, use randomized Bluetooth addresses, otherwise they allow scanners to follow their users location over time.

I don't think that's an Apple thing, but rather a BLE thing, isn't it (though technically opt-in)? https://www.bluetooth.com/blog/bluetooth-technology-protecti...

Private resolvable addresses are a BLE thing, but very few devices (aside from Apple products and Android phones) actually use them. It’s a shame, really, because most embedded BLE stacks support the feature.

My company is working on a platform to make BLE product development much easier than it is today, and also to improve the quality of BLE products. We plan to make privacy a standard feature.

Re: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why annoy people like this? My e-bike has Find My tracking built in to the firmware. As long as you don’t steal my bike you have no privacy concerns from me securing my bike. Even better I can track my bike down without involving the police, so the potential thief doesn’t even have to worry about being shot by some trigger happy cop.

Is “cop shoots bike thief” something you actually think is common enough to note? This implies a concerning reality departure.

I find the wording itself interesting. I guess it's a sort of class-tribalism that's developed to the point where it's so ingrained in some people's mindsets that they causally append bizarre comments like that to their sentences.
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