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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

#111
post #73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can’t realistically inspect dozen random products from Amazon each day and never let an AirTag slip. They stream from home with an iPhone for face tracking so accuracy will be nothing short of ideal.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain to me how a thief is going to use the existence of this tech to enable theft.

I think their point is that knowing there’s an air tag on something nearby indicates it’s probably something of value worth stealing.

Unlike my eyeballs that can see an expensive bike in the range of the airtag transmission.

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

#113
post #109
post #44

Great. So you just made an app that helps bike thieves find the airtag hidden in my bicycle.

Won't the AirTag start beeping if your bike is stolen (that is, if the tag is away from your iPhone for too long)? I think that will alert them much better than this app will.

Some people are disabling the speaker by opening the airtag and and removing its connection.

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

#114
post #59

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.

In many areas of the US, that trigger happy cop will be the difference between you recovering your property and you being severely beaten when you show up in a rough neighborhood trying to get your bike back.

> In many areas of the US, that trigger happy cop will be the difference between you recovering your propert

A cop's not going to get your bike back. They'll write a report and then throw it away when you leave.

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

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Chance of getting hit by lightning: 1 in 500,00 = 2.0 * 10^-6 [1]

Population of earth ~7674mil, so I can pop out have a little bit of a rampage, settle some scores and kill ~15,000 and you wouldnt consider that I had 'done much wrong'.

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

#116

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…

> There’s protection even if you’re standing there naked … if the paired phone isn’t around, the AirTag makes noise. Unless someone piggybacks on Apple’s find my network using their own hardware. I read the specification and turned my laptop into an airtag clone one day I was particularly bored, really isn’t complicated.

  > I read the specification and turned my laptop into an airtag clone one day I was particularly bored
This is believable.

  > really isn’t complicated.
This isn't.

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

#117
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are probably even thin enough that can embedded into cardboard or somewhere in the product so only open the box to inspect doesn't matter

The gifts could then sit in "quarantine" for a day or so, with an Android phone running AirGuard sitting nearby.

Is it possible to build a "delay fuse" with a CR1216 or CR1616, Nch FET and a 6-pin AVR all inside a CR2032? Yes, with plenty of room to spare for caps[1]

1: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_oLLKOVUAItesC?format=png&name=...

e: meant to say delay fuse, not slow [blow] fuse

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

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already is the case. iOS alerts you of any airtag it detects for a long enough time.

Since this app is for Android and the Apple apps mentioned by the parent comment are for Android, I think he's saying Apple should be the ones providing their own AirTag app for Android, not university students.

I would far prefer that the app be developed by a third-party, not Apple. But Apple's spec that the app uses should be open (which I believe is in fact the case).

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

#119
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The small evil part of me wants to extract this part of the source and just bring my phone onto public transit for a while to see what happens.

You don’t AirDrop cat photos to people at mass gatherings?

Isn't the default AirDrop setting to receive from people in your contact list only? (It was on my Mac and iPhone.)

Probably some people change the configuration to take AirDrops from everyone, but I'd expect that to be a small minority.

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

#120
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tracking using Airtags has very little to do with Apple or any entity that could be controlled via legislation. Airtags themselves don't allow a non-owner to access location data anyway. The tracking via Airtags is just putting a device on someone's person without their knowledge. That is already illegal but unless you know a crime has been committed you are SOL.

Not to mention you can detect an airtag, cellular devices your out of luck

Of course you can detect a cellular device. You mean, can't detect with an app on your phone.
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