I found the beep on lost (in this case, "lost" but not in a malicious way) tags to be pretty quiet or just not distinctive. While taking care of a friends cat with an airtag in the collar I kept thinking I was hearing a car down the block or maybe my PC was making a strange sound. Even knowing about the behavior and expecting to hear a beep I didn't pick up on it for several days.
‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
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Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#12I’m stalking my whole family - with daily warnings to everyone - because apparently Apple hasn’t realized it can be useful to have keys shared within a family. We do all have iPhones connected to the same family account. This is a glaring omission.
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#13Surely this means google needs to react to this and add native Airtag support to Android to detect this behavior?
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are airtags difficult to use to stalk someone with an android phone? Most don't know about it and don't install anything to prevent it.
Is the beeping not enough? I understand you don’t get a phone notification but it would be obvious as long as you’re near the tag.
I believe the assertion was that someone could disable the beeping.
However, I don't think a speaker is a requirement for Find My (I could be wrong). I don't think this has one: https://chipolo.net/en-us/products/chipolo-card-spot?cl=head...
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#15A month ago, almost everyone in my family received "unknown accessory detected with you" alert on our iPhones. It was scary, and we spent hours looking for an Airtag in every crevice of the car, and checking every bag we had. Couldn't find anything.
After extensive googling, we found numerous reports online about AirPods Pro most likely having a bug alerting their owners about "unknown accessory". If it's true, and firmware had a bug, Apple was probably in a weird position of not being able to publicly acknowledge it, to avoid potentially giving a false sense of security to folks who actually had the real alerts.
For us the alert never reoccured, and FindMy was erroring out when we clicked on "get more info about the device", so most likely it was a bug.
[edit] Reddit thread with other similar possible bug reports: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphonehelp/comments/q3n1e5/dont_own...
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#16I’m stalking my whole family - with daily warnings to everyone - because apparently Apple hasn’t realized it can be useful to have keys shared within a family. We do all have iPhones connected to the same family account. This is a glaring omission.
If you're in the same family account there's a button to turn off those alerts. It worked for my family.
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#17How many people were being stalked before AirTags with no way of realizing that it was happening?
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#18> “If you really are nefarious and evil and you really want to find someone, there are things that are much better than an AirTag” (...)
While it's true that there are better ways to stalk people, I think an AirTag brings something to the table that wasn't there before: the normalization of having stalking hardware at hand.
Buying a "stalker kit" requires me to think long and hard about stalking someone. I need to make the decision, buy the hardware, wait for it to be delivered (or, alternatively, walk into the kind of store that sells spy equipment), create an opportunity, and go for it. Most well-adjusted people wouldn't go so far.
But once AirTags normalize having these things in your keychain all the time, the "entry barrier" for stalking is lowered. All it takes is one beer too much and a split-second decision.
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the beeping not enough? I understand you don’t get a phone notification but it would be obvious as long as you’re near the tag.
I believe the assertion was that someone could disable the beeping. However, I don't think a speaker is a requirement for Find My (I could be wrong). I don't think this has one: https://chipolo.net/en-us/products/chipolo-card-spot?cl=head...
One of the listed features is that it reaches 105 dB.
Re: ‘I was just scared’: Apple AirTags lead to stalking complaints
#20It's insane to me that technology that is very likely used for stalkerware or other dystopian purposes, like AirTags, Google Homes, Alexas, Ring Cameras, Boston Dynamics Spot and related models, and the like, have been embraced unquestioningly by the vast majority of people because of flimsy weak reasons of "convenience" or whatever. Maybe I've just been in our industry for too long....