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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

#301

Post by rhtgrg »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #171
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?

Yeah, it feels to me that Apple went too far with their anti-stalker provisions. I believe much of the problem could be eliminated if there was some sort of central filter to the alerts. Phone says to the filter "I see an unknown air tag ID# xxxxx". So long as there is another phone that says "I see a known air tag ID# xxxxx" no alert is triggered. Only when no device claims the tag as known would the phone speak up.…

Wouldn't this mean that all a stalker would have to do is hide an iPhone in your car along with the airtag?

Although at that point you don't even need the airtag.

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

#302

Post by filoleg »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #236
educaysean wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument isn't very convincing. AirTags are one of the few location tracker that the public can recognize by sight and identify its use. This makes AirTags much less effective for use by malicious actors than other generic black-plastic case electronics.

My friend just had someone jack up his car and hack off a catalytic converter with a hacksaw in broad daylight, to steal it. How long does it take to place an airtag, 3 seconds? I think the chances of you being caught placing an airtag are slim to none.

A bit of an off-tangent: does your friend live in Seattle? Because catalytic converter and bike theft in broad daylight have become a staple here, but it is definitely not the norm in other cities.

So I wouldn't judge how easy it is to do something like that in general, based on a city where the prosecution is notorious for letting all kinds of criminals get released the morning after, which leads to the police not bothering with "minor" crimes like this (i.e., what's the point, if they will just get released the morning after and you waste both your time and the department time).

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

#304

Post by filoleg »

hankman86 wrote: post #229
dpeck wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to disagree with your overall point, but on #2 magnets work well for this and there are a lot of “hide-a-key” type things on the market that are often used in wheel wells by people who have a history of locking their keys in their car.

Good point, but may I add 5) AirTags are a very expensive way of stalking someone. Surely, there may be some creeps willing to put up this sort of money. But some random guy who sees her on a night out and who happens to have an AirTag with attached magnet with him? And if that was indeed the case, wouldn’t there be some pretext to this, like someone hitting on her that night and she turned him away? She doesn’t ment…

> AirTags are a very expensive way of stalking someone

I don't know your frame of reference in terms of what counts as expensive here, but an AirTag just $29 if bought individually or $25 if bought in a 4-pack. $25 would cover 2 drinks on a night out here (a major west coast US city) at best (and that's without accounting for tax+tip+etc.).

Plenty of stalkers out there are definitely willing to spend way more than just the cost of ~2 drinks, when it comes to stalking someone.

I agree overall that plenty of things in the story don't add up, but the AirTag cost imo isn't one of them.

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

#305

Post by edgedetector »

briffle wrote: post #237
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…

And both should be simple for the police to link to the owner, if they are reported. Maybe a bit less so for a SIM card, but that AirTag is registered with someone’s phone

"So not even Apple knows the location of your AirTag or the identity of the device that helps find it."

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

#306

Post by seoulmetro »

kordlessagain wrote: post #197
hankman86 wrote: post #191

While it’s theoretically possible that this happened, I think this particular story was made up. For a number of reasons: 1) How did the stalker know that that’s her car? She said she was on a night out. Unless she went back to her car all the time, he must have seen her arrive in it. 2) Sticking an AirTag to the inside of the front wheel well isn’t easy. There is dirt and grime there and the surfaces aren’t flat. Th…

I think the problem with saying something was made up is that it becomes blaming. I would hope people don't vote you down because I think that blame is justified, because I questioned how it was presented, on Twitter. I think if it was something related by a friend or close acquaintance to me, then I'd believe it. That it is being disseminated on Twitter in the way it was, I have a tendency to suspect there is more t…

>I think the problem with saying something was made up is that it becomes blaming.

What's your point? Blame is not a thing to be avoided.

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

#307

Post by NicoJuicy »

nomel wrote: post #279
NicoJuicy wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, this is news we're hearing about because of the steps Apple took to make it harder to use these devices for bad purposes. I've got Android. Where do i see a warning? Ps. No, people with Android will not have a Apple app installed. It's the wrong solution for that problem.

How is it the wrong solution? An app is required for any of this to work/be detected. Either everyone jumps on the same bandwagon (Google joins Apple or something), or you install the app for the bandwagon that exists.

? No.

An app must be installed to detect abuse, who would install that preventively?...

For setup, sure that's possible as an app. But my comment was "where do i see a warning", as in : detect abuse.

A protocol should be implemented, so it can be implemented on a more broad os level.

In reality: no one will install an app for a potential abuse and i can't imagine someone would think otherwise. The people that are getting conned are obviously not the users configuring the AirTag.

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

#308

Post by tzs »

tzs wrote: post #64
jeroenhd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That app requires you to click a button every time you think you're being followed. Then it'll scan and report any results. It won't warn you of an AirTag someone attached to your car, unless you make it a habit to constantly press "scan" all day. AirGuard ( https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard ) can do this for you, at the cost of battery life for having something scan for Bluetooth signals in the background all d…

> It won't warn you of an AirTag someone attached to your car, unless you make it a habit to constantly press "scan" all day. Wouldn't you only need to scan whenever you return to your car?

I may have been too terse. In more detail, if you want to know if someone tagged your car there is no point in running the scanner when you are out of range of your car. You only need to start scanning when you get in range.

If you start scanning then and find that there are no tags, you only need to keep scanning if there are people around who might be able to sneak a tag on while you are there without you noticing.

Once you get in and start driving you can stop scanning unless your threat model includes people tagging your car in the middle of your trip.

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

#309

Post by ClumsyPilot »

filoleg wrote: post #302
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend just had someone jack up his car and hack off a catalytic converter with a hacksaw in broad daylight, to steal it. How long does it take to place an airtag, 3 seconds? I think the chances of you being caught placing an airtag are slim to none.

A bit of an off-tangent: does your friend live in Seattle? Because catalytic converter and bike theft in broad daylight have become a staple here, but it is definitely not the norm in other cities. So I wouldn't judge how easy it is to do something like that in general, based on a city where the prosecution is notorious for letting all kinds of criminals get released the morning after, which leads to the police not b…

nah, it's a town in UK

I can't make sense of what's going on with prosecutions there, sometimes I hear about people getting away with major crimes, other times some poor sod gets charged for possessing 'material useful to terrorists', The Anarchist Cookbook, which you can buy on Amazon.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-5892603...

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

#310

Post by seadan83 »

desmosxxx wrote: post #300
seadan83 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being offensive, it does not matter if you are in downtown SF - stop being afraid of the homeless and black people and assuming that they are more likely to harm you than someone you know. That statistics are not with you there. But let's look at some statistics: https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm Bathtub: 341 Assault by sharp object: 1,805 From that, assuming their data is correct, for every…

Not really, these statistics arguments are inane. A bathtub you have control over may not be especially risky. The stat itself probably includes unsupervised kids, elderly, etc. Take those out because they don't apply to me. You don't have as much control over strangers. And any given homeless person may or may not be judged as especially risky - that's up for the person there to decide. There's also little downside…

I'm not quite implying that events happen with dice. More that if we knew the true frequency, we would gauge there to be far less risk (because there is actually far less risk).

Meanwhile, you don't fully control if you slip in a bathtub, a person ascribes much less risk to the bathtub than they should (due to lack of confirmation bias and lack of knowledge of the risk stats, bathtubs are surprisingly riskier than you think; but if you put it in the context of what is the chance of a fall, you would start to think the odds are not that bad - and any serious fall with that many hard surfaces around can easily have a very bad outcome. So it's more consider the risk of any fall, now compare that to the statistics of 'stranger danger'. The point is that everyday common events, your car, your bathtub, your daily commute, can pose magnitudes more risk than even the shadiest of homeless person).

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