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Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

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Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#111

Post by stingrae »

daenz wrote: post #88
KennyBlanken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it never happened.

I'm trying really hard not to come to this conclusion, but the tweet thread doesn't make any sense. >I didn’t wanna go home, so I spent the night somewhere and just said I’d figure it out in the morning. So they stayed somewhere and said they would figure it out in the morning. Ok, that's reasonable. >this morning while I was asleep I had someone close to me check my car How did they tell someone to search the car wh…

it also appears like the battery tab was never pulled in the picture.

edit: my mistake, missed the part where they threw away the original air tag.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#112

Post by tshaddox »

mrweasel wrote: post #98
frakkingcylons wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true, no app is necessary. The AirTag will start beeping once it's been separated from its owner for longer than 8-24 hours.

That's going to be hard to hear when driving on the highway, also, the seems like a long time if someone is following you home from a bar. I don't think there's any good way for Apple to fix this. On the other hand, it's been possible to do something similar for a long time, just not this easy, and at this price point. You could suggest that the AirTag disable tracking if it move along with the same phone for more th…

The only significant differences between AirTags and other devices are the fact that the victim’s phone might be used to transmit their own location and the widespread availability and marketing of AirPods compared to other devices. Apple can’t really do much about the latter (other than discontinuing them), but it seems like they could partially address the former by having each phone only transmit the location of non-owned AirTags a single time. This might not work if the victim’s car if in heavy traffic where phones in other cars can transmit the location, but it could at least help in cases where a single car is driving home alone.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#113

Post by tinus_hn »

ahepp wrote: post #8

Surely Apple can use information from their Find My account to figure out who the AirTag was registered to. Even if the tag has been destroyed. That should be trivially easy, right?

AirTags are registered to an Apple account, not a person. It’s not necessarily possible to trace it back.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#114

Post by tshaddox »

endisneigh wrote: post #79
beaconstudios wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger is that predators could track a child to a secluded area and abduct them.

Couldn't someone just slip a phone in a bag to do the same thing?

Yes, but that’s probably a larger and more expensive device.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#115

Post by exhilaration »

endisneigh wrote: post #89

Are people against the idea of GPS trackers? Lightbug uses GPS and has a 6 year battery with a size smaller than a credit card. Ultimately there's no way to put the cat in the bag. I'd argue it's not possible for a tracker to exist that cannot be used for bad purposes.

Wow! This is a Hollywood-level tracker.

Smaller than a car keyfob Absolutely tiny at just 56 x 37 x 12.9mm, it can fit almost anywhere Plus it weighs almost nothing! (35g) And the battery lasts a month.

https://thelightbug.com/

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#116

Post by jeidz »

frakkingcylons wrote: post #71
raldi wrote: post #24

The worst part of this is, if you don’t have an iPhone, you’ll never know if you’re being tracked. Edit: Yes, I know there’s an app. Do you think more than 1% of victims will have it installed?

Not true, no app is necessary. The AirTag will start beeping once it's been separated from its owner for longer than 8-24 hours.

I’m sure it’s easy to open the AirTag and pierce the speaker.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#117

Post by mschuster91 »

otterley wrote: post #93
mschuster91 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops have been known to push stalking, domestic violence, rape and similar cases under the carpet or, even worse, abuse the contact information from the criminal complaint to stalk the victims themselves (see [1], [2] or whatever turns up at Google for "police officers stalking women"). Not to mention the organized denials of service that regularly crop up as "backlog of rape kits discovered" headlines. Women have al…

Is this the rule or the exception? No doubt there are reported failures, but is that the average experience for a reporter (even accounting for race, gender, etc.) of a stalking or other similar personal security concern? Stories such as these are useful for motivating the public and our government to fix the problems, but they have a side effect of discouraging people from taking useful action where it would not be…

> but is that the average experience for the typical reporter of a stalking or other similar personal security concern?

In Germany, it is estimated that 300.000 (!) stalking cases happen each year, not even 20.000 get reported to the police - and only 1 % of these (!!!) ends up in a conviction.

Unfortunately, as with all attempts at estimating why crimes are not reported, data is scarce - the general consensus seems to be a mistrust in police and the court system (either that the case gets ignored, that proof is insufficient or that personal data ends up at the offender - I personally was exposed by incompetent cops at court after filing a criminal complaint for racism against a local Nazi, fwiw), and a fear of attackers escalating their behavior.

[1]: https://www.zeit.de/news/2020-12/25/stalking-grosse-dunkelzi...

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#118

Post by kemayo »

raydev wrote: post #110
kemayo wrote: post #86

This is news just because it's an Apple device being used for something that was already trivially possible. GPS trackers designed to be magnet-attached to a car which report their location via cell signal cost ~$20 on Amazon. You then tend to need to pay for either a SIM card or a subscription to the device maker's service -- bringing you up to about the cost of an AirTag. These are much harder to detect, as you mig…

> This is news just because it's an Apple device being used for something that was already trivially possible. > GPS trackers designed to be magnet-attached to a car which report their location via cell signal cost ~$20 on Amazon. You then tend to need to pay for either a SIM card or a subscription to the device maker's service -- bringing you up to about the cost of an AirTag. So you're saying Apple made it even mor…

I'm saying anyone who wanted to do this already could, and Apple's version is worse at being abusive than what they could already do.

Sticking trackers onto the cars of people parked near bars isn't really a thing you do on a whim.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#119

Post by awinter-py »

is this part right?

> If a foreign AirTag is around ANY Apple device that’s connected to a network, a nefarious AirTag owner will know its location!

the airtag is phoning home over all apple hardware, whether or not it belongs to the owner of the tag?

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#120

Post by jeidz »

topochico3 wrote: post #100
ctoth wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ... a net negative? Okay, like maybe I get that some people abuse this thing and maybe that's bad and maybe ten extra people got their car stolen this year or something although even that is questionable given that Tile already existed. But net negative? All the utility from all the people that found all the things they found this year with AirTags is counteracted, is wiped away by... what?

You can always buy more stuff. Lowering the bar for stalking seems like a bad trade off, doesn’t it?

Not for the people who own stuff.
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