Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 508 posts

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#71

Post by Syonyk »

323 wrote: post #57
Syonyk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think all bases can be covered, certainly. But neither do I think Apple has been doing a good job of even trying to do a good job of it, at least recently. Apple clearly put some thought into how the product would be misused, and added some features for that - but then appears to have not bothered having actual (simulated malicious) users test those features to see how they'd bypass them. Things like "removin…

Making AirTags safe is fundamentally impossible, a bit like trying to make a knife impossible to hurt yourself with. For example: > deliberate disabling of the speaker rendered the device useless after a few days That only kicks the can. Now people will silence the speaker from outside, for example by covering the whole AirTags in superglue and foam to muffle all vibrations.

> for example by covering the whole AirTags in superglue and foam to muffle all vibrations.

Which makes it larger, harder to hide, and easier to find. Go try - see how much foam it takes to reasonably muffle the beeper. It'll take a lot more than you think.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#72

Post by 323 »

Syonyk wrote: post #71
323 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making AirTags safe is fundamentally impossible, a bit like trying to make a knife impossible to hurt yourself with. For example: > deliberate disabling of the speaker rendered the device useless after a few days That only kicks the can. Now people will silence the speaker from outside, for example by covering the whole AirTags in superglue and foam to muffle all vibrations.

> for example by covering the whole AirTags in superglue and foam to muffle all vibrations. Which makes it larger, harder to hide, and easier to find. Go try - see how much foam it takes to reasonably muffle the beeper. It'll take a lot more than you think.

If I put it in your bag or in your car, I can make it 10 times bigger and you will still not notice it.

Use your own thinking, how would a red team go about silencing the device.

Also, try covering your phone speaker holes with your finger. See how effective that is.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#73

Post by bigmattystyles »

cyral wrote: post #35
bigmattystyles wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but philosophically, you shouldn't have to opt in (to opt out) - if I don't want to any part of apple's ecosystem, this forces me to actively opt out.

What about Tile and other AirTag competitors? None of them even have an app to alert you to unwanted trackers at all.

No love for them either - but your retort is pure whatabout-ism - it doesn't address my core complaint.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#74

Post by post_break »

FireBeyond wrote: post #27
post_break wrote: post #13

Just keep nerfing it Apple. They made the beeps louder with this new update too. So every time my wife borrows keys, my car, etc it's gonna go nuts. I guess I'm going to have to rip the speaker coils out of all of them at this point.

Or just buy them on eBay, pre-silenced. I'm really not exactly sure what happened here in this "update", other than "FYI, we'll give out information after being subpoenad" and "we'll also include a dialog to say "don't track people with these"." "So, basically nothing, then?"

It will alert people that they are being tracked even sooner than the threshold now, and it will now play an even louder alert tone.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#75

Post by varenc »

dwaite wrote: post #51
isoprophlex wrote: post #16

Are airtags still useful for eg. tracking a stolen bike? Or will it now alert the thief within minutes that the bike contains a tracker?

There are details not exposed outside of NDA, but my suspicion is that there is a requirement that MAC rotation happen more slowly, like every 15 minutes, and it is a bluetooth MAC and the actual GPS/cell based 'movement' which together trigger an alert. If a bike's Find My support randomized its MAC on every broadcast, it may very well not be possible to tell that it is not a new device each time. That might not be…

I believe an AirTag stops randomizing some broadcast identifier when it’s separated from its owner. The AirTag by itself has no location awareness. But when an iDevice sees the same separated AirTag at multiple locations it fires the alert.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#76

Post by nomel »

varenc wrote: post #64
nomel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said this in other threads, but I'm probably done buying AirTags, because the anti-stalking features, that I assume you're aware of, are so annoying, that I don't want to add any more to my life. When I get in my car with my wife, we both get a notification that an AirTag is following us, because my wife is potentially stalking me with her purse and keys. I can silence this notification for only one day. I can't…

Apple just needs to add shared AirTags to iClould family sharing. I think that’d solve your issue and ~90% of other unwanted stalking alerts. They already allow shared “Find My iDevice” and just need to add AirTags to the mix.

I agree, but from previous HN threads, people have said that this would enable people in abusive relationships to be stalked. Also, it appears that some distance is required to trigger the notification, so I imagine stalkers could use the AirTags within this distance. For example, to find which apartment someone lives in, within a building.

I think there will always be headlines about stalking and abuse, and people claiming Apple didn't do enough (even though it's so annoying as is), regardless.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#78

Post by eternityforest »

olliej wrote: post #47
eternityforest wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of scares me. Privacy first tech groups seem to be getting more vocal about trying to change the whole industry. I hope someday we have a fully open global tracking network, not affected by Apple an Mozilla and all the rest who seem to want to destroy any technology that can be used to invade privacy, regardless of how many legitimate uses it has.

Can you give examples?

Battery Status API, Ambient Light are the two big Mozilla examples I know, but I suspect the list may be fairly long. I believe they are also against web bluetooth and serial.

Apple has some permission stuff that apparently degrades Tile on their platforms IIRC.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#79

Post by varenc »

nomel wrote: post #76
varenc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple just needs to add shared AirTags to iClould family sharing. I think that’d solve your issue and ~90% of other unwanted stalking alerts. They already allow shared “Find My iDevice” and just need to add AirTags to the mix.

I agree, but from previous HN threads, people have said that this would enable people in abusive relationships to be stalked. Also, it appears that some distance is required to trigger the notification, so I imagine stalkers could use the AirTags within this distance. For example, to find which apartment someone lives in, within a building. I think there will always be headlines about stalking and abuse, and people c…

> would enable people in abusive relationships to be stalked

I can see that concern, but family sharing ALREADY lets you share iDevice locations at all time. That's a superior form of stalking compared to AirTags... So I just don't get this concern. It might just be perception though. From a PR perspective this is a bad time to release any feature that could be perceived as reducing AirTag stalking alerts.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#80

Post by dwaite »

tssva wrote: post #29
darkwizard42 wrote: post #2

These feel like welcome changes. Don't think it addresses all the past concerns.

It addresses none of the key past concerns. Specifically the ability for the devices to operate with their speakers disabled and no effective means for non-iPhone users to detect they are being tracked. The Android app Apple released is basically useless since it requires manual scanning.

> The Android app Apple released is basically useless since it requires manual scanning.

It is better than nothing. The limitation on background scanning is likely due to Android + diverse hardware not providing a low-power way to do such a thing.

The more effort Apple takes to bind an Apple ID to a real world identity, the more consequence comes from abuse of a tag. The alerting serves to make that consequence more likely.

Post reply on HN