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Silenced AirTags with disabled speakers are popping up for sale online

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

#291

Post by eternityforest »

post_break wrote: post #4

Taping them together tightly silences it. Airtags have to be the most nerfed product I've bought. Day one, they were fantastic. Then they lowered the beeping and rogue alerts to a threshold my wife gets them from my keys or wallet all the time. Then they just beep randomly. I regret buying them to be honest. Tile never really got harped on for stalking. The samsung trackers work just as well as Apple and don't have a…

Tile is amazing. But all this AirTag stuff has me worried stalkers will switch to Tile, and then Tile will get ruined the same way.

I wish we had a fully open alternative with the same global tracking network.

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

#292

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

jdminhbg wrote: post #282
wang_li wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was all over the tech news space back in November that a woman was alerted to one that was moving with her. Someone attached it to her car. And again in January. https://www.wbrc.com/2021/11/18/woman-discovers-tracking-dev... https://www.insideedition.com/atlanta-woman-cant-find-apple-...

You'll note that there's never ever a culprit in a single one of these stories, and nobody ever successfully carries out the crime by actually showing up to an apartment or cornering someone in their car. It's classic urban legend stuff. Would you expect people to sometimes get away with committing a crime like stalking? Yes. Would you expect every single person who commits stalking in this way to always, without exc…

> simple misunderstandings, like someone accidentally dropping one somewhere.

The uniquity of technology gives real stalkers this nice excuse. How convenient!

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

#293

Post by eternityforest »

ohyeshedid wrote: post #199
dylan604 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the same time, you are using the Apple network/infrastructure of iDevices that track that item for you. Every Apple device that passes your lost product helps find your product. Should they be doing that for free? Serious question.

> Should they be doing that for free? Serious question. If they don't provide the network: what value do the tags, you bought with money, provide?

They shouldn't be doing it for free, someone else should have an open tracking service.

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

#294

Post by gonzo41 »

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 could NOT sell the tech. It's a choice.

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

#295

Post by rolobio »

dereg wrote: post #279
rolobio wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tile does not have nearly the network that Apple does. I attached an AirTag to an electric scooter, which I ended up returning. I forgot to remove the AirTag; I've been able to track the scooter over hundreds of miles with quick updates (even driving down a freeway). I've been having a fun time checking in on the scooter for months now. I have a Tile attached to a generator at my house. Since I've disabled Tile on my…

You are being gross. You should disassociate the AirTag from your account. You seem to insist that you forgot to take the AirTag off, and that leaving it on was an accident. Well, you now know that you didn't and, since you don't plan to retrieve it, shouldn't surveil it for your idle whimsey. If you sold your home and forgot to remove a few of your indoor cameras, is it okay for you to continue to monitoring the hom…

To be clear, it’s sitting at a FedEx facility. I’m not watching some new owner ride around on the thing. But since people are so offended, I’ll disown it.

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

#297

Post by rndgermandude »

dylan604 wrote: post #151
smoldesu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...but didn't open the protocol to third parties. In other words, it's as "open" as the lightning connector is: "pay us $x for every product you ship, and we won't sue you for using it" Apple's marketing must train in the Matrix for how good they are at dodging bullets...

at the same time, you are using the Apple network/infrastructure of iDevices that track that item for you. Every Apple device that passes your lost product helps find your product. Should they be doing that for free? Serious question.

You have a point about the infrastructure. But the devices themselves aren't Apple's devices, they are owned by Apple customers. I'd bet most of these Apple customers would be fine with you "using" their devices for free to locate your stuff, as long as you don't charge them either when they use your devices to locate their stuff.

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

#298

Post by TameAntelope »

silisili wrote: post #289
TameAntelope wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we should normalize not reacting violently to theft because items can be replaced by insurance. Theft is not a problem at the volume you're suggesting it is a problem. Most people don't have most of their things stolen most of the time, and AirTags have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the threat of theft. And yes, it absolutely has to do with your emotions; everything has to do with emotions, the entire…

There's a lot to unpack in this back and forth. Violent reactions are really the only deterrent left to keep thieves at bay. If everyone was so laissez faire about it, well, I'd eventually expect my house to be emptied daily, and my insurance to cost about $30k a month. I get your point that theft isn't currently -that bad-, but realize that using that info to justify thievery just keeps compounding the problem.

> Violent reactions are really the only deterrent left to keep thieves at bay.

This is objectively false. There are laws, which are enforced by courts, that provide sufficient deterrent.

I cannot stress this enough; if you respond to property loss with violence, you deserve anything bad that happens to you.

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

#299

Post by eternityforest »

willcipriano wrote: post #43
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.

This is a place for a generic open protocol. To have a real internet of things we need some kind of DNS but for objects.

Would anyone be interested in actually building this? I would love to work on something along these lines.

An open protocol would mean trackers could be built right into things, like a keychain flashlight with a tracker.

You also wouldn't need a phone to pick them up, an ESP32 could handle the relaying to WiFi, so something like a school's lost and found could have a fixed base station for $5.

Even better, devices could relay microscopic amounts of data through nearby nodes. It would be like the Things Network, but at a quarter of the cost and with zero new hardware to get started.

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

#300

Post by GekkePrutser »

myself248 wrote: post #147
post_break wrote: post #4

Taping them together tightly silences it. Airtags have to be the most nerfed product I've bought. Day one, they were fantastic. Then they lowered the beeping and rogue alerts to a threshold my wife gets them from my keys or wallet all the time. Then they just beep randomly. I regret buying them to be honest. Tile never really got harped on for stalking. The samsung trackers work just as well as Apple and don't have a…

Tile didn't work well enough for stalking. I bought some Tiles and Trackrs and gave them to friends who agreed to help me test their usefulness, pretending that they had "stolen" these items from me. I would see if I could locate them a few days later when I "noticed them missing". I got one ping from a Tile once when the friend had apparently stopped for gas, but none from their house. And zero at all from the Track…

Same here, I tried bringing a 'lost' tile with me on the Barcelona subway. It took a month for one ping (it was paired with a smartphone I left at home with the Bluetooth off)

Also tiles don't rotate their BT address so they're an ideal method for shops to track you.

Apple's method actually works because it doesn't need an app installed and they have mitigated the third party tracking problem.

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