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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

#141

Post by terhechte »

jonpurdy wrote: post #82

So I and my wife both have AirTags. Every time we take a walk together, we both get notifications that there's an unknown AirTag with us (each others'). You can pause these notifications for just one day, which means we get notified every single day. Does anyone know how to disable this for specific known AirTags?

When an AirTag is assigned to an iCloud account, and a device (say an iPhone) is with you, then you shouldn't get these messages. But if one of you didn't bring their phone but, for example, the keys, you will get these messages, yeah.

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

#142

Post by newaccount74 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #129
awinter-py wrote: post #119

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?

It works like Tile and other previous Bluetooth trackers - it relies on a network of devices that can pick up the signal from the tracker and phone it back to the owner/Apple to know the location.

With the major difference that taking part in the Tile network is opt-in (you have to install an app) while taking part in Apple's Find My network is forced on iOS users (there is a way to opt-out, but 99.9% of iOS users are unaware of it).

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

#143

Post by emeraldd »

Reading that, it sounds like a situation to call/drive to/or otherwise get the attention of the police. Attaching a tracking device to your vehicle is a significant indication of malicious intent. It's a potentially life threatening situation and should be treated as such.

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

#145

Post by irthomasthomas »

CPLX wrote: post #106

As someone who has been around message boards and forums since the late 90’s one thing that has really surprised me is the degree to which people have started taking first person online stories seriously. Reddit of course is full of them, as is Twitter and lots of other places. Meanwhile the incentives to successfully tell a just-so story that goes viral have never been higher. Youtube money, GoFundme, influencer opp…

I stopped when I read that. Terrified woman stays with friend after being alerted to a tracking device on her car. While she sleeps, the friend searches the car and discards a tracking device. Right. And everyone else here treating it like that is fine.

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

#146

Post by 323 »

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…

> AirTags will also beep if they're separated from their owner.

Why didn't the AirTag beep in this situation? She said she went around the car trying to find it.

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

#147

Post by toss1 »

Between reports of AirTags being used to enable auto theft and stalk targets, it is pretty obviously a very handy criminal tool. Apple definitely needs to do something about this for both ethical and reputational reasons.

the beeping if separated from owner after 8-24hrs is a bit helpful, but likely not noticeable if attached to the outside of a car. This is also a pretty big window in which to pull off your crime.

I'd suggest that all tracking come with logging of the original owner's Apple device and it's location. The handy general use case would be to find your phone with an airtag (e.g., on your keys) and another phone (e.g., friend in the group). The obvious deterrent to criminals is that their target and the police will have their device ID and location. They might still get away with it, but would need effectively a burner Apple phone & location history separate from their real device.

Other ideas?

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

#148

Post by _zzaw »

stingrae wrote: post #111
daenz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s a photo of a generic AirTag, not the actual tag that was found—that one was apparently thrown away, which a few folks here (including me) find a little strange.

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

#149

Post by MarkSweep »

On the Apple help site, it says you can disable an AirTag that is following you:

> To disable the AirTag and stop sharing your location, tap Instructions to Disable AirTag and follow the onscreen steps.

If I’m understanding this correctly, this means you can defeat this type of stalking easily. On the other hand, this makes AirTags less useful for tracking stolen items, as presumably the thief will disable it.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212227

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

#150

Post by matthew-wegner »

323 wrote: post #146
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…

> AirTags will also beep if they're separated from their owner. Why didn't the AirTag beep in this situation? She said she went around the car trying to find it.

They begin beeping at a random time between 8 and 24 hours after separation, not immediately. Probably it was still too soon?
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