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Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

gizmodo.com

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Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#251

Post by duskwuff »

Scoundreller wrote: post #169
kube-system wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part is convincing anyone to use your open protocol, when the people who are in the best position to implement it are also the ones who would most benefit from a closed-protocol.

Bitcoin used to do this: low value and/or infrequent transfers used to be free. Only charged money for big transfers and the high frequency traders. Dunno why it stopped. Seemed sensible to reward hodlers and incentivize use for microtransactions. Ultimately, liquidity comes from being able to trade a big thing easily for lots of small things.

> Bitcoin used to do this: low value and/or infrequent transfers used to be free.

Miners used to include zero-fee transactions in blocks when there was space available. Nowadays, most blocks are full or nearly so, so miners have a financial interest in mining transactions with the highest fee-per-byte first and ignoring anything which has a low or zero fee attached.

There was never any special handling for "infrequent" transfers.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#252

Post by duskwuff »

beambot wrote: post #27
kube-system wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my AirTags because they actually have a functional tracking network. I've lost items outside the house with a Tile tracker attached and it proved to be entirely worthless for actually finding my stuff. They simply don't have a good network.

They need to switch over to Helium's LoRa network, which has vastly better coverage...

LoRa and LoRaWAN don't belong to Helium. They existed long before it.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#253

Post by Gigachad »

up6w6 wrote: post #168

Or you can load your own firmware to any other embedded device with Bluetooth and also make it totally undetectable from iPhones by changing keys frequently and making it appear like multiple different AirTags. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack/

I think the cat was out of the bag in a way on this one. Apple put in a good effort to stop abuse but the technology is in people hands now.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#254

Post by Gigachad »

exabrial wrote: post #217

Apple's Airtag's are a solution looking for a problem. You can't use them to "track lost items" while alerting thieves to their presence. Conversely you can't allow thieves to scan for their presence when they steal something. Their intended use case is pretty useless "find your stuff you've lost" I think, as it covers a small market segment compared to "LoJack, but cheap and fancy like Apple". The solution requires…

For me the airtags are really useful for keys/wallet. They aren't stolen but are just lost. I somewhat agree that the rest of the solution needs to come from government since Apple has done their best to prevent abuse but it isn't possible.

It should be a serious crime to track someone without their knowledge. Something that police take seriously.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#255

Post by TameAntelope »

jkestner wrote: post #171
errcorrectcode wrote: post #71

Anecdotal regional issue: I had an AirTag on my AirPod Pro's case that was stolen. I immediately notified Austin's police (APD) as I could see where it was going. Unfortunately, due to understaffing of 100-200 police officers and detectives, most calls unrelated to imminent threats of injury or death aren't being handle for days or ever. So, it's open-season on packages and property because APD can't or won't do its…

Lot of assertions without citations in this thread. HN can do better. If you’ve never had something stolen before, let me flesh out your data point. The police almost never investigate theft of private property—if they do, it’s when there’s serial theft in an area. That’s anywhere in the US, in any year. They’re only there as a notary of sorts for your claim to the insurance company. It’d be cool if police used the s…

Once you take the emotional factor out of theft, it's basically solved by the concept of insurance. Just replace your things, and you should be mostly whole again.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#256

Post by Gigachad »

seshagiric wrote: post #162

A number of iPhone users are reporting instances of unknown object tracking their location. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253235422 Apple support does not provide any details about the issue.

This sort of thing has happened to me but it was just my bfs airpods which triggered the alert.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#257

Post by TSiege »

Gigachad wrote: post #253
up6w6 wrote: post #168

Or you can load your own firmware to any other embedded device with Bluetooth and also make it totally undetectable from iPhones by changing keys frequently and making it appear like multiple different AirTags. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack/

I think the cat was out of the bag in a way on this one. Apple put in a good effort to stop abuse but the technology is in people hands now.

They in no way put in any effort to do this. They added the bare minimum that they were told at the outset was not enough. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/13/apple-air...

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#258

Post by Gigachad »

julienb_sea wrote: post #204

AirTags are so irritating. If you ever travel with a group its like daily notifications about someone's stalking you with their airpods and there isn't a way to permanently ignore a device.

Have certainly seen it happen with airpods. It's meant to not trigger if the owner is nearby but it seems this fails often with airpods while the airtags are good at not alerting you.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#259

Post by diebeforei485 »

andrepew wrote: post #14
rootusrootus wrote: post #8

I guess I don't get it. For the price of an AirTag, you can buy a more capable tracker with GPS and mobile data. And it won't be notifying the trackee that it's there. The AirTag seems like a downgrade.

What tracker is comparable in price? An AirTag is $30 with no other monthly costs. Genuinely asking, I would love to find a better solution.

T-mobile has a cellular tracker for $5/month, with no device fee. Over the course of one year, this is very comparable.

Re: Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

#260

Post by Gigachad »

tssva wrote: post #172
jccooper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An iPhone will eventually notify you about a tag that is following you. You can get a "Tracker Detect" Android app that will do a similar thing. There's also plenty of apps that'll just tell you all the NFC devices in your vicinity.

Apple's "Tracker Detect" app for Android will not automatically notify you about a tag that is following you as an iPhone will. Tracker Detect only supports manual scans for tags.

They likely can't. Background bluetooth scanning is a highly locked down thing because retail used it with apps to scan tracker beacons.
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