161–170 of 383 posts
Apple AirTag Linked to Increasing Number of Car Thefts, Canadian Police Report - https://nypost.com/2021/12/07/carjackers-are-using-this-new-...
Why does the thief bother to track your car back to your house to steal later? Why not just drive around the residential areas where the cars are parked and just choose one at the time you want to do the theft?
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iPhone will send an alert to you if unknown AirTag is following you around.
then I don't see how this is a problem having someone else's airtag on the car. the owner of the car is the only person being "followed" by it.
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In one way. In another way, the only way the tweet author knew was because Apple alerted them to the fact that they were being tracked. Other trackers would not do that. It seems Apple actively put effort into thwarting this kind of use.
They did the bare minimum so that once in a while creepy stalkers will get noticed. Should we give them an award?
This isn't a new thing and Apple takes steps that, for example, Tile doesn't to prevent their products from being used for nefarious purposes
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…
While you're correct, I think there is something to be said about the popularization of the technology. Most people aren't aware of GPS trackers other than movies and think they are much harder to come by. AirTags are also less nefarious by nature. If you get caught with a GPS tracker on your person that's pretty suspicious. If you're caught placing an AirTag on someone's car it's easier to pretend you dropped it and…
That doesn't make any sense. If someone catches me placing an AirTag in the undercarriage of a car, it's pretty difficult to pretend that I dropped it there.
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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…
> It's a product where Apple really didn't consider the real world implications. It's a neat device, and I'm sure it's well intended, but it's not fit for the world we're currently living in. Exactly; it's unfortunate, but this sort of product should really be made illegal, just due to the many ways it can be misused.
All that making GPS tracking devices illegal would do is to eliminate all the positive-sum uses of the technology, while creating literally no additional barrier for people already willing to break the law.
It’s the “then only criminals will have guns” thing, but much more clear-cut, because while making your own gun from general-purpose input components requires a machine shop and an unethical person with machining skills to run it (and so making guns illegal really does make guns harder to acquire — though not impossible), making a GPS tracker from general-purpose input components can be done in your own living room without even a soldering iron.
In Canada Airtags are used for car theft https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/apple-tracking-devices-being-used...
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…
- keys with airtag attached are lost, thief (perhaps opportunist) can find the home/car they belong to
- stalker types can steal an airtag from a water bottle, handbag, or whatever, and find the owner's home
Not an iPhone user but AFAIK the lost phone scenario was already covered with even pre-airtag "Find my..." since you could log into iCloud web interface on any other device and use that
Curious if all one needs to do is get one and stick it on a randos car to cause psychological distress without even pairing with a phone or otherwise registering/activating the thing.
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While you're correct, I think there is something to be said about the popularization of the technology. Most people aren't aware of GPS trackers other than movies and think they are much harder to come by. AirTags are also less nefarious by nature. If you get caught with a GPS tracker on your person that's pretty suspicious. If you're caught placing an AirTag on someone's car it's easier to pretend you dropped it and…
> If you're caught placing an AirTag on someone's car it's easier to pretend you dropped it and are looking for it. That doesn't make any sense. If someone catches me placing an AirTag in the undercarriage of a car, it's pretty difficult to pretend that I dropped it there.
Apple AirTag Linked to Increasing Number of Car Thefts, Canadian Police Report - https://nypost.com/2021/12/07/carjackers-are-using-this-new-...
Why does the thief bother to track your car back to your house to steal later? Why not just drive around the residential areas where the cars are parked and just choose one at the time you want to do the theft?