Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

121–130 of 156 posts

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

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately yes it is.

All of this reminds me of good old bluejacking, which was when we did the same thing using Bluetooth.

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

#122
post #56

This is something Apple should be providing themselves (edit: for Android). They already have "Apple TV", "Apple Music", and a "Move to iOS" app. Is it really so much to ask for a stalking prevention app?

This has to be at the OS level or it will either be killed by the OS or ruin your battery life.

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

#123

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.

Almost all of the tags are on people’s keys which hold close to no value

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airtags do allow non-owner devices to disable some functionality such as turning off the alarm. I doubt they let you turn off the tracking since that would completely defeat the anti-theft aspect of Airtags.

Although, if you find one, it's trivial to remove the battery or smash it with a hammer.

Removing the battery is the official way of turning them off. If the anti stalker mode activates on your iPhone. It shows an animation of how to twist and remove the battery.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would an app on device A disable device B?

Airtags do allow non-owner devices to disable some functionality such as turning off the alarm. I doubt they let you turn off the tracking since that would completely defeat the anti-theft aspect of Airtags.

A moving AirTag will start chirping was little as a few hours after not being near it’s paired device - which alerts the thief, unfortunately.

But, AirTags use a proper speaker rather than a piezo one - so it is possible to remove the permanent magnet and make them silent. (See YouTube for details)

If you were worried about a high value item (eg a motorcycle) you could hide two - a sacrificial regular one, and a better hidden silenced tag that should remain undetected for at least a few days.

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

#126
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately yes it is. All of this reminds me of good old bluejacking, which was when we did the same thing using Bluetooth.

Funnily enough, I just found out BT Info (or SuperBluetoothHack) still exists and you can run the old .jar with J2ME Loader on Android. Or you can use the new apk. But of course it only works on the old phones.

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

#127

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.

Am sure there is a startup idea in there somewhere.

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

#128
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume the bike thief doesn't have an iPhone?

Because the bad guys never have one in the movies /s

Future movie spoilers alert! And it’s actually true isn’t it! :-) Apple won’t let bad guys use their hardware; https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/26/apple-wont-let-bad-guys-use-...

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

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait a second, why is the chance of getting shot and killed by the police a per capita statistic. The denominator should be the number of police-initiated encounters. I could only find 2018 data, but it's likely in the same ballpark. [1] Thus, the chance of getting shot and killed by police (2020): 993 in 28,880,900 = 3.44 x 10^-5 For African Americans (2020): 241 in 3,393,800 = 7.10 x 10^-5 So it's an order of magni…

Overall, I agree with what you've written, though on the disparity in shooting incidents regarding race Roland Fryer's paper[1] came to different conclusions (it's different data but a more extensive data set and approach): > In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find that, conditional on a police interaction, there are no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensi…

I mean, there's a number of high-profile published articles that have issues with fryers study.

Ultimately, though, what's your purpose for making this argument? If we say that Fryers study accurately proves that conclusion, what do you think we should do with that knowledge?

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

#130
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems so, there’s a constant named AIR_TAG_SOUND_CHARACTERISTIC with this value: 7DFC9001-7D1C-4951-86AA-8D9728F8D66C

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.

starts at line 93 of https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard/blob/main/app/src/mai...
Post reply on HN